The Indian Railways Promotee Officers' Federation, that was vocal about its discontent about the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission, was now going to stop doing overtime after regular office hours till their demands were addressed by the central government.
The action was expected to affect the general efficiency levels of the Railways and could also eat into its profit margins estimated at a minimum loss of around 20 per cent margins compared to last year, claimed IRPOF. It, however, clarified that the officers will not take any action that will cause inconvenience to the general public.
Jitendra Singh, secretary general of IRPOF said that the Sixth Pay Commission downgraded the Gazetted Group B officers, particularly middle management field Officers and engineers and created a wide gap between them and direct Class I recruits.
The demand jointly raised by five railway federations together is that the promotee Group B gazetted officers and engineers should be placed in Pay Band-3 (Rs 15660-39100) to maintain the parity among gazetted officers."
According to the Pay Commission, the Class I officers who join at a basic pay scale of over Rs 8,000 now will now join at Rs 15,600.
Earlier, there was no difference between officers in Pay Band 2 and Pay Band 3 as the work responsibilities are essentially the same. While the impact on salaries currently was minimal the lowering of status was highly demotivational", Singh said.
The IRPOF claimed that in case the revision of scales and grades was not applied the net expenditure incurred by the Indian Railways for the 8,000 promotee officers would be around Rs 40 lakh (Rs 4 million) per annum. Nearly 80 per cent of them had already reached a pay scale of Rs 9,650 and above whereby there was no difference is scale with Class I officers.
The promotee officers constitute nearly 65 per cent of all the railway officers in organised services excluding the Railway Protection Force and the medical officers. Of them around 2,500 were Class I officers while the rest were Group B officers.
It had submitted a memorandum to the Cabinet Secretary on the 17th of last month and a 12-member committee was formed thereafter to look into the issue. The memorandum was forwarded by the Railway Board, signed by the Chairman and approved by the Rail Minister himself. A decision was awaited by the end of this month. Railway officers to avoid overtime
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