The Indian Railways Technical Supervisors Association (IRTSA) in its meeting with the 8th pay commission (8th CPC) has demanded increase in minimum pay to ₹52,600, fitment factor of up to 3.80, and better pay levels and allowances for employees.
In an official release issued after its meeting with the 8th CPC in Hyderabad last month, the said that it has submitted a comprehensive memorandum to the panel. The presentation was made by IRSTA General Secretary K V Ramesh General Secretary “on specific issues pertaining to Technical Supervisors”, it stated.
Career stagnation, pay hikes: What are the demands?
The association in its statement said that it highlighted to the panel issues related to career stagnation among technical supervisors. Key demands it said includes:
- Increase pay levels for Junior Engineers and Senior Section to better reflect their duties and hazards nature of work.
- Classifying Senior Section Engineers as Group-B gazetted status.
- Revising the to ₹52,600 based on modern economic factors and different fixation factors were demanded.
- Higher indexing of fitment factor should be followed for posts from level 6 in Ministry of Railways, for safety category posts.
- Fitment factor for level 1 post has arrived as 2.92, for posts level 6, 7 and 8 should be “2.92 x 1.2 = 3.50”.
- For mid position posts in pay level 9 to 12 fitment factor of “2.92 x 1.3 = 3.80” should be adopted.
- Introduction of group for open line engineers and staff based on the benchmarks of Railway Board for various maintenance activities.
What issues related to Railways’ technical staff?
According to the statement, Ramesh highlighted several key issues related to “anomalies in for Junior Engineers and Senior Section Engineers”, i.e. JEs and SSEs. These include:
- Demand for five grade structure starting form level 7 for JEs for technical supervisors,
- Disturbance of vertical relativities and horizontal parities with other categories,
- Distribution of Group-A, B and C posts in technical departments of and insufficient Group-B posts,
- Classification of SSE posts as Group-B,
- Stagnation among the cadre particularly in SSE grade and stagnation of Graduate Engineers recruited as SSE in their entry grade,
- Inclusion of training period for the purpose of MACPS,
- Implementation MACPS w.e.f. 01.01.2006 and its related judgements,
- Bottle necks to the to Group-B due to — a smaller number of Group-B posts, unjustified comparison of running staff at lower grade with Technical Supervisors and continuance of bottle neck at Group-B level,
- Allowances related to Technical Supervisors including night duty allowance, over time allowance, Production Control Organisation (PCO) Allowance, etc.
It added that Ramesh briefed the panel on withdrawal of PCO allowance for SSE in level-8, including explaining the Railways’ system (self-financed within the Railways) and its role in improving productivity of PUs and workshops, and extension of accident-free service award, risk and hardship allowance to open line engineers and staff.
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