BHUBANESWAR: Protesting the indifference of the Railway Board towards their long pending demands, railway engineers from Visakhapatnam, Sambalpur and Khurda Road divisions as well as Mancheswar Carriage Repair Workshop and East Coast Railways Headquarters staged a dharna here on Thursday.Submitting a memorandum, the ECoR Engineers’ Association said though Indian Railways is the largest engineering organisation, it does not have a separate recognised platform for engineers. The Justice Khanna Committee on Railway Safety had recommended the same but it has not been accepted. As a result of which engineers have to associate with the labour unions and the labourers working under them take advantage.According to general secretary of ECoR Engineers’ Association Bobin Mohanty, the Railway Board has implemented the grade structures in such a manner that now railway engineers and their assisting staff work in Group-C which weakens the managerial stand of engineers on matters of safety.The wrong policies adopted by the Board places the engineers below the nurses in pay structure. Both graduate engineers and nurses join Railways in the same grade pay but the latter get two promotions in her service period whereas the former gets none. The memorandum demanded that grade pay of diploma and degree engineers should be at least Rs 4,800 and Rs 5,400 (pay band III) with group B status. The agitation was part of the call given by All India Railway Engineers Federation, the apex body of All Zonal Railway Engineers Associations. The body has warned to intensify the agitation if their 10-point demands are not conceded soon.
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