By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 23, 2016: A delegation of Railway Engineers representing "Indian Railway Service of Engineers Officers Association" (IRSEOA) led by its Vice President Mr A.K. Sachan met Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh here on Thursday and sought his intervention for timely promotions and parity in promotion to higher posts in the Ministry of Railways.

While expressing gratitude to Dr Jitendra Singh for his kind intervention through Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) which helped in expediting the cadre restructuring proposals of 8 Group “A” services of Indian Railways, the members of delegation sought a review of the DoPT decision which had allegedly led to cut-down in the posts of HAG+, HAG and SAG level selectively for IRSE cadre. They said, IRSE cadre is already lagging behind most of the other cadres of Indian Railways by three years in HAG and SAG promotions, as a result of which, in IRSE cadre they get HAG & SAG promotions after 34 and 25 years of service respectively, as compared to 26 and 18 years respectively for most of the other services in Government of India.

In a memorandum submitted to the Minister, the representatives of the Railway Engineers pointed out that Railways is a multi-disciplinary organization having eight Group A organized services and therefore, for maintaining operational harmony within the organization, it is necessary that inter-cadre parity is maintained. They also complained that even though, as per DoPT's monograph on cadre review, the promotional norms for SAG and HAG are 17 and 25 years respectively, the IRSE officers are getting promotions much later which has led to demoralization in the services.

Dr Jitendra Singh assured the members of delegation that he will ask the concerned officers in DoPT to study the inputs offered by them and come out with an objective view on the same.