Manpower shortage taking a toll at railway ticket counters

Rail commuters, who wait for frustratingly long hours at stations to buy tickets or book parcels, should brace up for more bad news. Fewer counters could be manned at some of the major stations in the city due to paucity of staff.

Chennai railway division has created a near chaos at ticket and parcel offices in several stations by randomly transferring around two dozen staff of commercial department, mainly reservation supervisors, booking clerks and deputy chief ticketing inspectors.

Enquiries made with railway staff revealed that the staff were shunted out of already understaffed stations, overlooking the transfer (seniority) register. Railway sources privy to the development revealed to DT Next that the divisional personnel department had issued orders on November 5, 2018 even without identifying replacement, and that too without the knowledge of commercial department, obliging senior office bearers of SRMU in Southern Railway (SR) zone. For instance, Beach station, which has only 14 staff against the sanctioned strength of 21, would lose another clerk if the transfer order had been given effect to. “Of the five counters, only four are working now. Now, it will be reduced to three. After Central and Egmore terminals, Beach is one of the busiest stations in the division from where several north bound express trains, Velachery bound MRTS and Tambaram/Chengalpet bound EMUs originate. Closure of another counter there could create chaos,” said a SR officer requesting anonymity.

Another railway source disclosed that the transfers were ordered even without the staff registering for the same. “Many of the transferred staff have not even registered for transfer. In one case, at least 10 people have been overlooked to favour one person in the list,” the officer said, adding that staff have posted to places like PWO, where staff are already adequate in number. There were also cases of staff close to the union being posted at Chennai Central despite them wanting out of the city. A chief commercial clerk in Velachery who had served in Egmore for four years and another of the same rank who was shunted out of Chennai Central following a vigilance inquiry have got their wish fulfilled by the personnel department. The list also includes a chief commercial clerk from Tiruvallur who was punished for changing currency post-demonetisation when railways collected invalidated notes for a while. A few clerks closely associated with SRMU have been moved from far off Tiruttani, Tiruvallur and Ponneri to Egmore, Perambur and Beach stations in the city.

Ironically, the out of turn transfers of personnel department has rendered redundant the register system followed since early this year by commercial department which updates the staff shuffling register every fortnight. Outrage among other staff and operational difficulties at stations have forced the division to put the transfer order on hold, at least till the replacements were identified. The staff were learnt to have been advised by the commercial department to continue at their existing offices till the issues get sorted out. In fact, P S Suriyaprakasam, joint general secretary of National Federation of Indian Railwaymen has petitioned the divisional railway manger Navin Gulati regarding the “deliberate attempt to break the transparent transfer policy” and requested him to immediately cancel the order and restore confidence among the staff and keep the ticket counters and parcel offices sufficiently manned.