NEW DELHI: world's biggest recruitment exercise has been carried out by Indian railways. It has kick-started 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 make available jobs around one lakh to youth from high school passes students. It seems to be aimed at direct attack on the opposition's criticism that enough jobs were not being created under the Modi-led-NDA government.

The decision to fill vacancies in the safety-related group is also in synchronization with railway minister Piyush Goyal's arrangement to make stronger safety in train operations which was smashed by a series of derailments.

The railway has issued notifications for the 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.

 Railways Staff expenses have full-fledged from Rs 69,713.22 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 72,705.57 crore in 2017-18 while Staff expenditure is pegged at around Rs 76,451.89 crore in 2018-19.

Justifying the World’s biggest recruitment 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 measures.

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