Cabinet approves continuation of Passes to Railway Employees & Pensioners

It is heartening that the Union Cabinet has approved the continuation of

Passes to Railway Employees & Pensioners on July 15, 2010 at the instance of the

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee – finally over ruling the recommendations of

the Expenditure Reforms Commission - made in 2004 for discontinuation of the

Passes to Railway Employees & Pensioners.



According to reports appearing in a section of Press (including ‘The

Tribune’, Chandigarh), an in-house Committee set up by the Railway Ministry had

assessed the annual expenditure - as Rs.528 crores - on Passes to 14 lakh

Railway Employees & Rs.57 crores on Passes to 12 lakh Pensioners (as in 2004) –

with an estimated cost of Rs.3311 per pass for serving employees and Rs.498 per

pass of Pensioners.



However, according to an estimate of IRTSA team, the actual impact on the

Railways is much less due to only partial utilization of the Passes by the Railway

Employees & Pensioners - considering that only a fraction of the journey is

actually performed by them than for which the Passes are actually issued. Many of

the Railway Employees & Pensioners don’t even take a single set of pass or not at

least full complement thereof as per their entitlement in a year – due to localized

settlement and lack of resources to meet with the over head expenses of a

journey.

But the Financial people while calculating financial impact of such

privileges don’t look at all these factors. Apparently the estimated figure of

expenditure of Rs.471 crores p.a. on Passes for Railway employees and Rs.57

crores p.a. on Passes to the Pensioners - as worked out by the said Committee -

was much on the higher side considering the above said factors.

- GS, IRTSA

COURTESY;IRTSA