Unions flay move to identify spots for pvt railway yards

While the ministry is planning to set up four such yards, the trade unions have declared a nationwide protest demanding to withdraw the move as it would render thousands of employees jobless.

The Ministry on July 1 issued a notification to auction of as many as 224 routes across 12 railway clusters in the country and 16 corporate firms, including Sterlite, Vedanta, GM Rao Group and CAF, expressed willingness to join the bidding. Sensing a stiff competition, the Ministry asked the zonal railway authorities to identify spots to guide the private players to set up their own facility for maintenance of their trains.

Sources said that as many as 24 services have been proposed to be run under Chennai cluster and four yards would be set up in Tiruchy, Madurai, Chennai and Coimbatore sections. The railway zones have been instructed to submit the details of the identified spot by August 7.

Meanwhile, Deputy General Secretary of DREU D Manoharan said that as many as 24 workers would be usually engaged to maintain a rake. He also claimed that with the introducition of private train services number of regular services would decline and result in termination of workers. “We will launch a series of protests demand withdrawal of the privatisation move”, he said.