Annual drive to ensure fair hiring in railways: Ashwini Vaishnaw
BHUBANESWAR: Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday said Indian Railways has introduced an annual recruitment process to ensure people are hired into the organisation regularly in a transparent manner as and when posts fall vacant.
Vaishnaw was in Cuttack to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly live radio programme Mann ki Baat, along with a host of other programmes. “A fresh recruitment drive has been started for selection of assistant loco pilots. The new annual process for recruitment has been introduced with this drive. This is the first step. There will be more employment opportunities in technical and non-technical popular categories and also in Group D,” he told mediapersons.
The minister said Indian Railways completed the recruitment process for 1.5 lakh posts recently and plans are afoot to create more employment opportunities in different railway zones. After conclusion of the drive, process began for filling up of vacant posts of assistant loco pilots.
Indian Railways has more than 2.5 lakh posts vacant under various categories including the maximum over 98 per cent in group C (non-gazetted) that consists of station masters, junior engineers and technicians among others. More than 50,000 safety staff positions, including posts in the signal and telecommunication department, are also lying vacant.
“Instead of bunching everything together, our objective now is to have an annual recruitment process on a regular basis. The recruitment drive will be conducted every year so that more and more people can get opportunities,” Vaishnaw added.
As part of the annual drive, the railways has commenced the process for recruitment of 5,696 assistant loco pilots since January 20. Now applicants for railway jobs will have opportunities every year instead of waiting three to four years, as was the practice earlier.
The last mega drive conducted for filling up of 1.39 lakh vacancies for non-gazetted posts was completed in two years. As many as 2.37 crore applicants had participated in two major competitive computer based tests conducted in 15 languages in more than 200 cities in 12 phases between December 2020 and October 2022.
The minister recently informed the Parliament that 4.89 lakh people had been recruited by railway recruitment agencies against various group C posts, including level-1 and security related posts, during the period from 2014-15 to 2023-24 (up to September 2023).