Hyderabad: Although South Central Railway claims that safety and punctuality are its priorities, they are often not followed at the ground level.
The engineers in charge of safety say that it’s always preferable to block lines during maintenance. But officials in charge of operation prefer operating trains without disturbing schedules.
The divisional secretary of SCR’s Mazdoor Union, Mr K. Shiva Kumar, said that SCR was utilising more than 165 per cent of track capacity and there was no time for engineering teams to maintain tracks.
“The engineering wing should inspect tracks everyday. Trackmen do packing and boxing under the supervision of the engineering wing. As per the rules, while taking up packing and boxing works, the authorities should block railway lines. This is not done at most places now,” he said.
A trackman from the Secunderabad Division said “We take care of train movements while working on tracks. We do not have communication equipment. So we rush to the nearest loco gate or station to inform the problems. We work in gangs and as per rules, each gang should have at least 15 trackmen. But, at present we have only four to 10 trackmen in a gang. We have to carry tools weighing about 25 kg and walk along tracks for about 6 km a day. Hyderabad and Secunderabad divisions are better for trackmen but other divisions are in forest areas. The condition of night patrol trackmen is very bad,” he said.
Mr Shiva Kumar said that SCR needed about 20,000 trackmen. Around 10,000 posts are vacant.
“The Railways sanctioned posts based on requirements 50 years back and now there are more lines. In most boxing and packing work areas, the authorities are allowing trains. This can lead to accidents. Besides this, scheduled works are not being done for old wagons. As per rules, the work on old wagons must be taken up for seven hours but in workshops the staff is completing works in four hours due to the large number of old wagons,” he said.
The accidents per million train km (APMTK), the accepted yardstick of safety, had improved from 0.11 in 2014-15 to 0.10 in 2015-16 and 0.09 in 2016-17, the Railways said in a release here last Wednesday.
Unmanned level crossing accidents have decreased to 60 per cent in 2016-17 compared to 2014-15 and no accident took place at manned level crossings last year. There were six accidents each in previous years.
It said that measures like elimination of unmanned level crossings in a phased manner, track renewals, introduction of the Vehicular Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD) System, Self Propelled Ultrasonic Rail Testing (SPURT), Ultrasonic Broken Rail Detection System (UBRDS), increase in the numbers of Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches, refurbishment of ICF coaches and introduction of the Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS) have led to a reduction in accidents.
