MUMBAI: Suburban services on Central Railway (CR) were hit on Friday, with close to 200 trains being cancelled due to a tiff between motormen and the railway administration over pending recruitment and revocation of compulsory retirement order against one of the former for jumping the red signal in January 2017. As a result, passengers were forced to face hardships through the entire day.
Vishwajeet Chakraborty, who works as a telecom professional at Nariman Point, said, “I was waiting at platform number one of Thane station for the train since 10.30 am. But five to six trains were cancelled at Thane.”
Mahesh Shrivastava, who works as a marketing manager in a media firm at Fort, said, “It was a very irritating journey. I had a meeting at Fort at 11.30 am but reached CSMT station at 12.22 pm.”
The motormen are attached to the Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh (CRMS), which had written to the CR administration regarding 229 vacant posts, demanding that they be filled immediately.
The CRMS had said that the motormen would not work longer than the prescribed duty hours for the vacant posts from August 10. The CRMS had also raised the matter regarding the indifferent attitude of the disciplinary authority in the Mumbai division i.e. not taking into consideration various contributory factors while deciding punishment in “signal passed at danger” (SPAD) cases.
CRMS president Dr R. P. Bhatnagar told reporters that pending vacancies should be filled and SPAD cases should not be given harsh punishment. He said that the authorities had assured them that they would review the punishment awarded to motorman Ramesh Shailani.
Meanwhile, the prin-cipal chief operations manager DK Singh has set aside Mr Shailani’s punishment looking at his first case of the SPAD in his service on Friday. However, a CR official said the decision would set a wrong precedent.
When asked whether motormen would not be required to do overtime, Sunil Udasi, CPRO of CR said that these were departmental issues and that they could not be discussed.
