BENGALURU: Among the 1,200 gangmen, eleven engineering graduates, an MBA and an MCA degree holder take care of maintaining railway tracks across its 83 railway stations. They are all here because of “family pressure to somehow get a government job”. Their monthly salary is `20,000.
When asked about the nature of the job, Yunus Basha, working at the Kuppam section, who has completed four years as a gangman and an MBA degree holder from Osmania University says, “It is very, very hard. It is more so for me as I have worked in a corporate environment in a plush office.” Along with 16 others, he is responsible for the 52-km railway track between Penekonda and Dharmavaram. “We report at 7 am and have to go to whichever part of the track we need to set right.”
He got married just a couple of months ago. “My wife’s family know I work for the Railways but do not know what I actually do,” he says.
Basha, however, refuses to give up on bigger dreams and uses all his spare time to prepare for the UPSC exams.
R Singaravalu, another engineering graduate who is also studying M Tech through distance education, is responsible for tracks near Somanaikanpatti railway station. He was a lecturer before he got the call from Railways.
“I was keen on taking up a government job. I tried to enter the Border Security Force and attempted other government jobs. Finally, I got this job and my father advised me to take it up,” he says.
Rajasekhar, 33, a electrical and electronics engineer, says it was sheer pressure from his father that forced him to take up the job of a trackman.
“I worked in a private firm in Hubballi for three years. My father was a railway employee. After he retired, he was very keen that I too enter Railways.”
Senior Divisional Electrical Engineer, Lakshman Singh, who heads the team says from the Railways point of view it helps to have such highly skilled individuals. “We will be going in for modern method for track maintenance in future and such technical people would be a great asset.”