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The Railway Board on Monday directed its zones to launch a "special drive" to fill promotional vacancies especially in the safety category, a move that comes amidst criticism over vacant posts in the transportation behemoth following the Balasore three-train accident in which 288 people lost their lives.
The internal order, accessed by PTI, has been sent to general managers of all railway zones and states that instructions have been issued by the Board from time to time emphasising the need for filling up promotional vacancies.
"It has been reiterated that Railways should ensure making use of all modes of promotions such as selection/non-selection/trade test/limited departmental competitive examination/general departmental competitive examination liberally to fill up the vacancies timely by chalking out a suitable action plan for the same," it said.
The order said that zonal railways should have by now assessed their vacancies and planned for filling them up as per their fresh selection calendars.
"It is reiterated that they may undertake a special drive to fill up the promotional vacancies, especially of safety category posts, through selection/General selection/non-selection/trade test, whichever is applicable in the matter," it said.
The order has also said that it has been noticed that the Zonal Railways are not regularly filling up the data regarding monthly promotion and quarterly targets on the google-sheets shared with them. These sheets create a central database of vacancies across railways, officials said.
"It is requested that the requisite data may please be arranged to be got filled up immediately as the position is being monitored at the highest level," it said.
Overall, officials said that staff shortage has remained a perennial issue with the national transporter.
While the latest vacancy data has not been provided by the Railways, according to the information given by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in Rajya Sabha in December 2022, there were a total of 3.12 lakh non-gazetted posts in the Indian Railways lying vacant pan-India.
Among them, a total of 14,815 vacancies were in the signal and telecommunications department and 62,264 in the traffic transportation department.
The highest number of vacancies according to his reply was in the civil engineering department, with 87,654 vacancies across the country, followed by 64,346 in the mechanical department and 38,096 in the electrical department.
The South Eastern Railway under which the Bahanaga Bazar station - the site of the June 2 tragedy- falls has 17,811 vacancies for non-gazetted posts and 150 vacant gazetted posts as of February 3, 2023, Vaishnaw informed Rajya Sabha.
In 2019, the Railways started a mega recruitment drive and the process of appointment of selected candidates is currently underway.
This drive is expected to fill up more than one lakh posts in the national transporter.