Railway staff upset over bifurcation of Palakkad division

A section of staff in the Palakkad division of the Southern Railway are upset over the Railway Board’s decision to detach the Mangaluru area from their division and merge it with the Mysuru division of the South Western Railway.

The decision is expected to be implemented on October 1. Functionaries of the Southern Railway Employees’ Sangh (SRES), affiliated with the Congress-aligned Indian National Trade Union Congress, say that almost 90% of the staff working in Mangaluru Central, Mangaluru Junction, and Panambur stations are from Keralam.

C. Janeesh, president, and K.P. Shynesh Kumar, secretary, Palakkad division, SRES, say that though the authorities have promised to accommodate most of them in their home State, it is unlikely to be practical. They point out that most of the incumbent staff in Mangaluru are posted in the maintenance and mechanical wings dealing with works such as repair of coaches and wagons.

At present, the repair and maintenance works of travelling coaches are done at the Mangaluru Central station and those for goods wagons at at the Mangaluru Junction station. There is no pit-line, the track with a deep pit beneath it used by technicians for inspection, maintenance and cleaning of coaches, at present in this part of the State, and work for one at the Palakkad Town station is yet to be completed. Another station where similar works are done on a small scale is Shoranur Junction.

Mr. Shynesh Kumar feels that it is not yet sure if all the existing staff will have enough work if they are shifted to Keralam. He says that a similar problem had occurred when the Salem division was bifurcated from the Palakkad division in 2007.

Some other staff, who do not wish to be quoted, say that those who stay back in Mangaluru will have their service records shifted to Hubballi in Karnataka, which is the headquarters of the South Western Railway. It is also not necessary that they may get a transfer in the near future, as they will figure last in the waiting list of the Keralite staff who have already applied to get a posting in their home State. If some of these staff even manage to get a transfer to the Southern Railway in the future, their seniority could be overlooked during promotions.

The SRES functionaries also allege that the staff unions had no information about the merger decision. “Ideally, a memorandum of understanding should have been signed between the general managers of both the divisions, with an undertaking to protect the concerns of the staff. That did not happen,” Mr. Shynesh Kumar says.