New Delhi, Sep 19 (PTI) The Indian Railway S&T Maintainers' Union has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask the Ministry of Finance for approving a long-pending proposal for 'risk and hardship allowance' for workers employed in signal and telecom maintenance department.
Over 60,000 signal and telecom (S&T) maintainers are employed in the Indian Railway and their job is to look after the signalling system for safe train running.
The Union in its letter dated September 12, 2024, addressed to the prime minister, said the PMO, responding to its previous letter, had informed it on May 5 that a committee was constituted in the Ministry of Railways to examine the issue of inclusion of fresh categories within the ambit of Risk and Hardship Allowance.
According to the Union, the PMO had further said, "The Committee has submitted its report and a suitable proposal has been forwarded to the Ministry of Finance. Report from the Ministry of Finance is awaited."
The Union stated that more than four months have passed since then and the Finance Ministry has not taken any action yet in this regard.
The Union for the first time raised the demand for 'risk and hardship allowance' in 2016 when one of its workers was murdered at Kota in Rajasthan when he, in order to maintain safe train operation, refused to open the level crossing gate for the traffic.
Besides, the Union said many of its workers are run over by trains as they work around the track to rectify defects in the working of the signals.
"We perform a risky job as many of our workers have to be on duty much beyond the eight-hour schedule and sometimes round-the-clock due to shortage of manpower in the S&T maintenance department across the railway network," Alok Chandra Prakash, general secretary, Indian Railway S&T Maintainers' Union (IRSTMU), said.
"Those railway employees who maintain tracks do a very tough job and are awarded with 'risk and hardship allowance'. Similarly train controllers also get risk allowance. Our job is also as unsafe as other frontline workers," he said.
According to Prakash, the Railway Board constituted a committee in 2019 to consider 'risk and hardship allowance' to S&T maintainers and, as informed by the PMO in May, the Committee has submitted a favourable report to the Finance Ministry.
"We are pleading with the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji to kindly pursue this matter with the Finance Ministry for the benefit of thousands of S&T maintainers who work day and night to ensure that crores of people reach home safely using the railway network in the country," Prakash said.