New Delhi, Oct 7 (PTI) An assistant signal and telecom maintainer was mowed down by Rani Kamalapati Jan Shatabdi Express while he was carrying on a regular track circuit upkeep work near Obaidulla Ganj railway station in Bhopal division of West Central Railway Zone on Monday.

Following this, Naveen Kumar, National President, Indian Railways S&T Maintainers' Union (IRSTMU) raised the safety concern of S&T workers alleging that the railway administration has failed to take adequate safety measures for its frontline workers.

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According to railway officials, an Electrical Signal Maintainer (ESM) was checking the proper functioning of the signal circuit system with two assistants, when one of them, Akash Goswami, was mowed down by the speeding express train.

West Central Railway Zone's Chief Public Relations Officer didn't respond to the Union's allegations.

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"The Railway Administration has no concern for the safety of signal maintainers. The senior officials are very much aware of the S&T workers' plight. They know that we work on tracks in a live environment which is open to train movement all the time. Despite that no safety protocol is being followed," Kumar said.

According to IRSTMU office bearers, earlier they used to be provided with walkie-talkies at major stations which made them aware of train movements by either hearing the conversation between train crew and station masters or directly communicating with the station masters but due to the shortage of these hand-held devices in the Indian Railways, the officials gradually stopped issuing these to S&T workers after 2020.

"Forget about S&T workers, the shortage of walkie-talkies is so acute that the Railways is unable to fulfil the requirements of train crew and station masters. It is the S&T Dept which not only provides walkie-talkies to train crew, station masters etc but it also runs service centres in almost each division for its regular maintenance but it is an irony that S&T workers themselves are deprived of its benefits," Alok Chandra Prakash, General Secretary, IRSTMU, said.

He added, "Vacancy and shortage of S&T workers add to the woes. We don't have enough people to send them as assistants who can work as call boys to alert the workers engrossed in their duties unaware of train movements."

In one of the recent developments regarding vacancies in Railways, Railway Board Chairman and CEO Satish Kumar recently wrote to the Finance Ministry, requesting the creation of new non-gazetted posts due to a significant increase in the assets of the railways in the last five years.

Underlining the increase in the assets of the signal department, Kumar said that there has been a 269 per cent increase in track circuits, 28 per cent in signals and 46 per cent in automatic signalling in the last five years.

The IRSTMU also complained that despite working in a risky environment, their long-pending demand for 'risk and hardship allowance' hasn't been taken care of yet. Recently it requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask the Ministry of Finance to approve the proposal for 'risk and hardship allowance'.

Over 60,000 signal and telecom (S&T) maintainers are employed in the Indian Railway and their job is to look after the signalling system for safe train running.

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