Reply to Sri Pandhi on his comment

Dear Pandhi,

There is nothing like stealing the issues of IRLRO by AILRSA. All the issues are the issues of Loco Running Staff and not monopoly of any union. Any union including AIRF, NFIR, BMS or IRLRO can take these issues on their own style and succeed over it, and after that claim it as their baby.

It is very sad to note that Mr.Pandhi has still not understood the railway administration properly. The 10 hrs agreement achieved on the floor of Parliament in 1973 was violated by Railway administration, same way they have dis–owned their own findings of HPC. Sitting on FAST at New Delhi on 14 & 15 December demanding to implement HPC recommendations was a master stroke to AIRF & NFIR who claimed to be the saviours of railway men. If 30 hrs PR can be made 40, six continuous night duties to three, 13 hrs duty to 12 hrs, motorman in the rear cab of EMU in place of Guard, if implemented is a small step forward since something is better than nothing.

AILRSA is in favour of 46 hrs PR and when it is implemented we will definitely give credit to IRLRO, but pending that we want at least 40 hrs PR as a relief and similarly when 54 hrs PR and 4 hrs Super Intensive classification is implemented we shall give the credit of that to AIRF. The present leadership of AILRSA does not believe that all the issues of Loco Running Staff will be resolved as desired by us overnight. If AILRSA did not sit in hunger fast this HPC report will also remain in the cold storage and now we are able to know what the content of the report weather was good or bad.

It appears that Mr. Pandhi is confused over the legal grounds to claim 40 hrs PR as he has failed to understand the legal grounds to claim 46 hrs PR after winning the case in favour of IRLRO. So many things not noted by HOER and notified by Ministry of Labour and Railway Board are being claimed by Loco Running Staff of various part of the country as matter of right like, 10 hrs duty in TVC, PGT and some divisions in ER/SER, out station detention of 48 hrs to 72 hrs in Southern Railway and South Western Railway, joining duty after Leave, training & sick by 08.00 hrs in some divisions instead of 00.00 hrs etc. Similarly, if we proclaim that 40 hrs is our right and start claiming it massively, railway board will realize the merit of the case and conviction of the employees to ignore the present rule and slowly be forced to bring corrections in HOER.

Mr. Pandhi is expecting railway board to give us all things in a silver plate which will never happen and we should grab our demands from the railway managements. The thinking of Mr. Pandhi that AILRSA leaders have no talent to deal such issues sound very foolish and final word has to come from majority of our cadres. As Mr Pandhi said, we are concentrating on NIT issue very well and when NIT declares favourable recommendations railway board will ignore and sit on it and we will have to implement it on our own daring the DAR action going into the struggle mode. So please prepare our cadres for a struggle instead of blaming AILRSA foolishly. Let us achieve our genuine demands stage by stage winning the confidence of our cadre on our demands.