There is good news for about 80,000 supervisory-level staff members of the Indian Railways. The Government has given the nod to the proposal to increase their salaries.
That means, they now expect a minimum hike of Rs 2,500 and maximum of Rs 4,000 once the increment is implemented.
Till now, people of this cadre were facing stagnation without any scope of promotion beyond Level-7. This hike will make them eligible for better pay grades.
For about 16 years now, the employees have been demanding that their cadre be upgraded. The only way they could hope to be promoted was to be selected for any of the over 3,700 vacancies by clearing a group-B exam. Now, provisions have been put in place so that 50 per cent of those from Level 7 can be promoted to Level 8.
Promotion of 50 per cent of the employees in non-functional grade, from Level-8 to Level-9 in four years has also been provided for.
Station masters, traffic inspectors, ticket examiners and other field-level employees in the supervisory cadre will benefit from this increment.
It took the combined efforts and persuasion of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF) along with the Ministry of Railways, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoP&T) and the Department of Expenditure (DoE) of the Ministry of Finance (MoF), to get the approval for the upgradation of pay scales of supervisory cadre staff as proposed by the Railway Board.
