Losses To Railways Due To Lockdown, Cut In Allowances Of 13 Lakh Employees Possible
The country has a lockdown till May 31, 2020. Passenger trains are closed due to the lockdown, causing heavy losses to the railways. In such a situation, the Ministry of Railways is planning to cut the salary and allowances of more than 13Lakh officers and employees.Indian Railways is going through financial constraints Under the scheme, allowances for overtime duty including TA, DA will be abolished.
Accordingly, the train driver and guard will not be given per kilometer allowance for running the train. According to the railways, why allowances should be given to employees to do duty. The Indian Railways is already under severe financial constraints due to the lockdown. Zero percent reduction in allowance possible According to the news of Hindustan Times, the allowance for overtime duty may be reduced by 50%.
There is a suggestion of 50 per cent reduction in allowance of Rs 530 for 500 km on the driver and guard of Mail-Express.Also, it is recommended to reduce the salary of railwaymen by six months. It is possible to cut from 10% to 35%. Not only this, non-practice allowance including patient care, kilometers can be reduced by 50 percent for one year. On the other hand, if the employee does not come to office for a month, the transport allowance can be deducted 100 percent. Apart from this, 28 thousand is received for the education allowance of children, which is yet to be reviewed.Railways will lose 1490 crores.
It may be noted that the Indian Railways has said that the entire amount of tickets booked for the journey will be refunded during the extended period of lockdown. The railway will refund passengers amounting to Rs 830 crore for 55 lakh tickets booked for the journey between 22 March and 14 April. At the same time, 39 lakh bookings were made for the journey between 15 April and 3 May. This will cause a loss of about Rs 660 crore in revenue to the railways. This means that Indian Railways will incur a total loss of Rs 1,490 crore in revenue.
