Railway workers manipulate AR &FR to swell pay packets
Majority of the 12,000 railway workers including engine drivers, guards, station masters and engineers currently agitating for a 12 per cent basic salary hike draw a fat take-home pay packet compared to other public sector employees by manipulating and exploiting loopholes in the Railway Department administration, official sources said.
Details of undue claims of overtime and other additional payments like Batta, travelling, distress allowances and incentives received fraudulently by railway employees have been revealed in a confidential investigation report compiled by a team of high officials following an internal audit recently.
Treasury statistics indicate while the annual income of the railway was over Rs.4.5 billion, the department spends more than Rs.9 billion annually to pay salaries and allowances of employees.
The investigation report emphasised the need of streamlining the department’s administration and accounts divisions, tightening the existing administrative and financial regulations to put an end to these illicit additional financial claims of workers.
“Divisional heads of the department have no other option other than approving such bogus claims as railway workers have the power and ability of an essential service to organise and protest against non-payment unlike other public sector employees,” a senior official of the Transport Ministry revealed.
These high handed tactics of railway workers are now ‘spiralling’ out of control, he said adding that there was an urgent need to thoroughly investigate into such manipulations and exploitation of payments for additional duties of employees.
It has been revealed that engine drivers of Sri Lanka Railways are drawing a take-home salary ranging from Rs.150,000 to Rs. 250,000.
According to the official investigation report, the basic salary of engine drivers was around Rs. 54,000, but their overtime claims was ranging from Rs. 175,000 to Rs. 180,000 per person per month.
An engine driver who works for eight hours will get a nine-hour break and paid 1 1/2 hours pay for every hour and this works out to 600 hours of overtime a month, this report revealed.
One of the main reasons for the Railway Department losses was the payment of unwarranted overtime for workers, but most administrators did not try to control it due to the fear of strikes.
In another administrative bungle, the department used to assign around three drivers to cover a journey of about 400 km, the report disclosed adding that for instance, a driver on a train from Matara to Colombo gets off at Galle where another driver takes over up to Colombo.
The third driver takes the same train from Colombo to Kandy.
There are also other serious faults in administration. Investigations found that when there was a power supply failure in a railway station about 50 – 60 km from Colombo, an electrician and an assistant are sent from Colombo to look into the problem.
What they do is to inspect the problem at that end and return to Colombo to report the problem.
They attend to the problem only on the second visit and for all these hours spent in travelling up and down, overtime and other expenses were paid to them.
This was the normal procedure being adopted by the department over the years for any kind of repair work at railway stations even for minor work like replacing a tube light, the report revealed.
A special payment is being made to railway guards up to now for carrying a small bag weighing around three kg with some tools needed for train operation for every turn of their duty.
This tradition introduced during the British regime still continues in the department spending a massive sum of money for additional payments to railway guards.
Some clerks working in the department draw an all inclusive salary of Rs. 54,000 per month with allowances and overtime.
Gross monthly salary of a technical officer is about Rs. 60,000 but some of the officers of similar grades receive a salary of Rs.120,000 with overtime and other allowances.
The cost reduction for the repair of railway lines, selling scrap metal and other discarded goods following proper procedure and efficient personnel management were essential to make the railways a profit-making venture, the report suggested.