Report by KEC correspondent
When thousands of youths of the country are protesting against delays in recruitment in railways, the government does not seem to be in a hurry to fill up vacant positions. The railway minister recently accepted that there are currently 2,65,547 vacant posts in Indian Railways. The vacancies in gazetted officers’ category are just 2,177 so bulk of the vacancies are in various categories of employees. He further told that during the last five years Indian Railways has recruited only 1,89,790 people, which means it recruited only 37,960 workers yearly on average. At this rate it will take 7 years to fill up all the vacant posts provided no posts fall vacant! Number of vacant post in different zones can be seen in the enclosed table.
It is evident that the government is not interested in filling up all the vacant posts. The yearly recruitment during the last five years was meant mostly to take care of yearly retirements/deaths. That is why the number of vacancies has come down only marginally even after nearly three years from 3,06,227 on 1 April 2019.
Keeping nearly 20% posts vacant year after year has significantly increased pressure of work on existing rail workers besides depriving youth of the country of secure jobs. Rail workers have to unitedly demand and fight for immediate filling up of all the vacant posts for their own sake and for future generations.
