On 10th of February, , all the motormen working in the Mumbai Central Railway suburban division launched an agitation refusing to work extra hours. This followed a motorman of the Central Railway Mumbai suburban services ending his life by jumping in front of a local train. The railway adminstration claimed that the death of this motorman was the result of an accident. The angry motormen of the Central Railway suburban services rejected this claim of the railway administration.
The motorman who succumbed to his injuries was on duty on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus to Panvel section in the early morning shift. While on duty, by oversight, he jumped a red signal. This kind of mistake is termed as SPAD (signal passed at danger) as per railway rules and can attract penal action up to and including termination. The agitated motormen are pointing out that such mistakes happen because of the severe stress under which motormen are forced to perform their duty.
In Mumbai Central Railway suburban section itself there are almost 30 percent posts which are vacant. Such a large number of vacancies result in motormen being forced to work extra hours. The Railway Board rules explicitly state that any motorman who commits such a mistake must be immediately relieved from duty pending further investigation! However, the number of vacancies is so large that the motorman was asked to take the train all the way back to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus even after he committed the SPAD mistake, because there was no other motorman available.
In this instance, after the motormen unitedly refused to work extra hours, the local administration promised to pass on their grievances to the Railway board. However, it is very important to note that the local officials confessed that even though they keep raising indents for filling up vacancies regularly, they cannot do anything unless the Railway Board gives its acceptance.
In general, work of the loco running staff is extremely stressful. Even the railway manual defines their work as high stress work. Specifically, the motormen in suburban railways have to work under extremely stressful conditions. In a typical shift, in the Central Railway Mumbai Suburban Division, they have to make 50 to 55 halts at stations and have to be attentive to more than 350 signals! In Mumbai suburban, the signal density is so high that the motormen have to concentrate very hard to discern the signal meant for their track. This demands extremely high level of alertness. However, most of the motormen do not get proper rest, since they have to work extra hours. So much so, , a motorman whose shift ends at 11 p.m. is asked to take rest in the Rest Room and join for morning shift duty at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.! Such rest deprived and sleep deprived motormen succumb many a time to problems like micro sleep, residual sleep etc. Working under such terrible conditions, motormen cannot be expected to ensure 100% safety of railway workers and passengers. Rail transportation experts have admitted this.
The motormen working in suburban railways do not get even a weekly off! They are expected to be on duty right through the year. This in itself is a blatant violation of the Indian Railways own HOER manual (Hours of Employment and Period of Rest Manual). Due to high work-related stress many motormen become victims of hypertension, stress induced diabetes etc. at a very young age. It is reported that troubled by all these problems, around 70 motormen have taken VRS in the last one year or so, and VRS applications of more than 50 motormen are currently pending with the administration.
The All India Loco Running Staff Association, one of the main organizations representing loco-pilots of Indian Railways has been raising these issues over the last many years. Even the government-appointed Kakodkar Committee to review Railway safety way back in 2013-14 had strongly recommended that there should never be any vacancy of running staff. Instead of urgently addressing such an important issue, the Railway Ministry has been stalling action while declaring much lower vacancy figures. On the one hand, when the loco running staff resorts to agitation, various internal circulars are issued by senior officials of the Indian Railways stating that loco running staff should not be over worked, while on the ground, the situation continues to worsen.
More than 3 lakh vacancies exist in various posts of Indian Railways, covering such critical departments and functions, like Loco running staff, Signal and Telecom staff, Track Maintainers, Guards, Station Masters, etc. Whenever any railway accident happens the Railway administration tries to pin the blame on railway workers. But the fact is that it is the capitalist outlook of the Government of India which does not value the life of working people, which is the root cause. For any capitalist owner of a business enterprise, everything else including safety is sacrificed at the altar of profit. The Indian government and various other arms of the Indian state behave in exactly the same way when they have to deal with the safety of working people. That is why it has “no money” as an excuse for not filling up vacancies, or for not giving the railway workers adequate safety gear. The Railway Ministry is only bothered about running the maximum number of trains at the highest possible speeds every day, even though it means exposing the railway workers to very dangerous working conditions. It is totally callous about the well-being of its workers and the safety of crores of working people who use the Indian Railways.
It is very important for the working class as a whole, the workers as well as users, to unite and refuse to accept unsafe working conditions. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that as long as the capitalist class rules our country, the safety of working people will always be considered as “a cost”. Only when their rule is replaced by the rule of the working class along with other toiling people, will the safety of the working people get the highest priority that it deserves.