Railways fights shortage of locomotive pilots

Indian Railways is facing an acute shortage of locomotive pilots and the situation is likely to worsen as the railway ministry’s efforts to fill vacancies have been grounded because of a paper leak that led to cancellation of this year’s Railway Recruitment Board exams.

Minister of state for railways KH Muniyappa told Lok Sabha on Thursday, “There are approximately 7,190 vacancies of loco pilots and 89,024 in safety categories in zonal railways as on April 1, 2009.”

“Loco pilots on Indian Railways are classified as ‘continuous’ and are statutorily required to work for 54 hours a week on an average, in a two-weekly period of 14 days. Rostered hours of this category of employees have, however, been fixed at 104 in a two-weekly period of 14 days, including preparatory and complementary time,” he said.

“As per instructions, running duty at a stretch should not ordinarily exceed 10 hours from departure of a train and overall duty should not exceed 12 hours from ‘signing on’ to ‘signing off’, except in emergent circumstances such as accidents, floods, agitations, equipment failures,” Muniyappa said.

Officials said around 1 lakh drivers operate 17,000 trains daily. However, the vacancy of 7,190 still assumes significance considering the fact that a driver needs to have 13-14 years of experience before he is upgraded to express trains.