NEW DELHI: In what is being touted as the world's biggest recruitment exercise, the railways has kickstarted the process to hire 89,500 employees, including assistant loco pilots, technicians, gangmen, switchmen, trackmen, cabinmen, welders, helpers and porters.

The state-run transporter's move to provide jobs to around one lakh youth from high school pass students to engineers seems to be aimed at blunting the opposition's criticism that enough jobs were not being created under the NDA government.

The decision to fill vacancies in safety-related category is also in sync with railway minister Piyush Goyal 's plan to strengthen safety in train operations which was dented by a series of derailments. The plan to fill entry level vacancies by massive hiring, coupled with trimming of the railway board by half, seems to be Goyal's strategy to "right-size" the railways which is "top-heavy". The railways has issued notifications for hiring of around 63,000 jobs in group D category that includes gangmen, trackmen and another for hiring 26,500 personnel as loco pilots and assistant loco pilots.

Around 1.2 lakh positions related to safety are lying vacant and the railways is trying to build its safety infrastructure by hiring more ground-level workforce. The additional hiring is likely to cost Rs 4,000 crore a year.

Staff expenses have grown from Rs 69,713.22 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 72,705.57 crore in 2017-18. Staff expenditure is pegged at around Rs 76,451.89 crore in 2018-19. Justifying the move, an official said the recruitment was long overdue as around 40,000-45,000 employees retired every year and the railways could not compromise with safety. However, the fresh exercise attracted controversy over minimum qualifications and age criteria.

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The railways had to relax the minimum qualification for its 62,907 vacancies of trackmen, helpers etc by dropping the requirement of an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) or equivalent certificate. Now, anyone with a minimum Class X certificate can apply. The railways had also relaxed the age criteria by extending it by two years across all categories.

