‘Privatisation of Railways compromising safety; leading to accidents, deaths’

New Delhi: Opposition members in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday said privatisation of various operations of the Railways by the Government has compromised safety, leading to accidents and death of many passengers.

During a discussion on the working of the Ministry of Railways, N R Elango (DMK) alleged that 2 million jobs in the Railways have been cut through contractualisation and outsourcing of the workforce.

After the BJP government came to power, in 2015 a Niti Aayog committee proposed a two-decade vision to privatise major segments of India’s extensive railway network. Since then the BJP government has implemented various privatisation measures through multiple approaches, he said.

Elango further said, “In the past three or four years we have lost valuable lives of 400 passengers due to train accidents, compared to zero deaths between 2018 and 2021. Why is this happening? This is happening because of privatisation of employees.”

The contractors again sub-contract to third sub-contractors and the employees of that sub-contractor do not own the system, Elango said, adding, “As long as they don’t own the system these kind of accidents will definitely happen. Instead of that, if you employ persons in the railways itself, they will own the system, the accidents will be reduced to a much lower level.”