EDITORIAL

Railway Safety in Danger

Dear Comrades,

The recent unfortunate accidents on NCR with large number of casualties have shaken the confidence of travelling public on our trains. Whenever there use to be accidents, the Railway Ministry use to be quite proactive and use to put all pressure on staff as well as on officers. There use to be enquiry in each accident and finally eighty six percent accidents are thrown to head of human failure.

We have many times raised this issue with the Railway Ministry that there should be honest in depth soul searching that, why accident occurred. Even machine and material failures should not be taken as human failure. We always prefer a constructive dialogue and counseling but that should be for real purpose of how to run railway safely.

Hon’ble Railway Minister is also badly shaken with these accidents have called experts from Japanese and Korean Railways for safety audit. He has also requested AIRF to help in running Railways safely. So far All India Railwaymen’s Federation and its affiliates are concerned we are always in touch with staff at all levels particularly those representing safety categories. The AIRF and its affiliates are often organizing safety seminars to counsel safety cadres at their own level. The problems are at different levels, non availability of adequate numbers of staff of safety cadre is main problem. Work done by contractual and outsourced untrained work force is also a big problem. The purchase of poor quality material and machines also lead to accidents many times. The stress on workers due to shortage of staff also leads to accidents. The interference of railway ministry in D&A procedures and issuing orders that staff must be removed from service in case of accidents is also creating such a panic situations where truth will never come out why accident happened? Everybody on accident site tries to save themselves. The maintenance is suffering due to lack of resources and many times due to non availability of block.

Anyway, we are all concern and appeal to the railwaymen not to adopt shortcut method under any circumstances. We would also appeal to Railway Ministry to provide full opportunity to AIRF and its affiliates for organizing safety seminar for proper counseling of staff. We always stand with safety and will provide full support to Railway Ministry, provided they should also pay heal to our concern.

E-magazine AIRF December 2016 has been uploaded below:-

Download Link Here