Railway workshops can't brook manpower shortage

Admittedly, filling up manpower void is more easily said than done, particularly when that workforce consists primarily of technical hands. And that is what begs the question: Why is the biggest railway workshop, this side of the Padma, at Pahartali in Chittagong, running with half its authorised workforce for a good part of 25 years? One feels that poor human resources management and planning has a lot to do with this state of affairs.

What has contributed to the current shortage is the offer of voluntary retirement that the large number of workers were only too glad to take up. And more than one-third of the workers preferred to leave their job under that scheme in 1993. And why not? Given the huge workload, the employees had to work extra hours, which had a heavy toll on their health. Workshops are not quite what one understands an ideal workplace should be, particularly, in our circumstances. And the recruitments that were done since 1993, when the scheme came into effect, were not enough to fill the void.

It bears no repeating that establishments that are technical and technology-oriented, and more so when they serve a very vital public sector like the railways, cannot compromise on their output, since that has a direct bearing on passenger safety. But given the current state of technical staff vis-à-vis the workload, such a possibility cannot be discarded.

All efforts must be made to fill up the deficiency, but more importantly, the HR departments both at the plant and centre must work out and implement a workable manpower policy. Planning ahead constantly to cater to the natural and unusual wastage of technical persons through recruitment and training, should be the primary preoccupation of the planners.