New Delhi: The Railway Board has directed the zonal railways to expeditiously dispose of pending requests of employees for transfer to the station or place of posting of their respective spouses.
The communication to the principal chief personnel officers of 15 zones August 17 came after the board received a number of representations from railway employees and their associations about delays or denial on their spouse ground transfer requests despite having a laid down policy.
“It is requested that all such pending requests may be examined and disposed of in terms of laid down policy,” the letter stated, adding that the respective zones should apprise the board a summary of all pending and cleared requests along with reasons for the delay.
The board is of the view that after the digitisation process of Human Resource Management System (HRMS), such requests should not be pending for long.
August 20 last year, the board issued a similar direction asking for “information pertaining to disposal of requests of transfer on spouse ground”.
After coming to know that there were several spouse ground transfer requests pending, it directed the zones September 6 last year to launch a special drive to dispose of all cases.
In its latest communication, the board has reiterated its direction and asked zones to bring to conclusion all new and old pending cases.
In March 2, 2010, the Ministry of Railways relaxed its policy of posting husband and wife at the same station keeping in view the need “to make concerted efforts to increase representation of women in central government jobs”.
The policy took into consideration various working conditions such as the seniority status of husband and wife, employment status where one of the spouses may belong to another central service etc and suggested transfer options accordingly.
Several such spouses working at different stations claim that they deserve to be posted at the same place as per the laid down norms, but the departments concerned have kept their transfer requests on hold without any valid reason. Some of them have alleged that their transfer requests were denied without any valid reason.
August 19 this year, the All India Train Controllers’ Association wrote a letter to the principal chief operation manager of the Northern Railway alleging wrongful denial of spouse ground transfer requests of train controllers.
“I would like to bring it to your notice that misinterpretation of Railway Board’s guidelines by Personnel Department has caused trouble for train controllers who are desirous of inter-divisional/zonal transfer on reasonable and permitted grounds,” the officer-bearers of the association said in its letter.
Senior officers in the board are of the view that immediate disposal of such transfers help enable employees to lead a normal family life.
PTI