The only department on Pakistan Railways that ensures the safety of all trains between two stations is the Department of Signals. Since the setting up of Pakistan Railways the workers of this department have been working day and night to perform their duties.
When a train enters a station it gets a down signal only when the track on which this train has to enter is in the proper condition and all the cross sections of lines are in their correct positions. The people sitting in the control room to down the signals do not know the conditions outside. Only the signal department is responsible for communication with them.
Guaranteeing that only one train is present on the track at any given time is also the responsibility of the signals department. Also the instruments managed by the signal department guarantees that only one train is present on a line between two stations.
Today the speed of trains is dependent on the signals department and those sections where standards of signals are low the speed of trains cannot exceed 60km/hour. Those sections which are classed as Standard I and Standard II have low speed trains while the sections classed as Standard III have trains operating which are restricted by other limitations.
In Standard III "AR I" is also included where all cross-sections come into position and are ready and locked in five to seven seconds. The signal also comes down in these five to seven seconds. This fast and important work is also possible thanks to the signals department. It may surprise some people to know that in getting down a signal sometimes up to 350 different kinds of relays are operated or checked.
Similarly, the Auto Block section also works thanks to the professional excellence and hard work of the signals department, which is used to save time, and once a track is cleared by the train the other train immediately follows and this continuous success is due to the signals department.
In short if one wants to list all the responsibilities of the signals department one would need a lot of space to elaborate on this. But the irony is that this department which is so important is continuously being ignored and its workers are facing hardship in their lives.
This department has never been given its due importance and the railways administration uses harsh measures to curb the financial benefits of the workers of this department. Despite all this, the department is included in the "most essential" category.
On the other hand the railways administration uses this ploy of classifying it in the "most essential" category to force workers to work for 24 hours. These workers are duty-bound to work whether it s day or night, summer or winter, raining or storm or any thing else. Also, if a worker has a serious problem at home he is not allowed to leave and even if a worker is ill or he has already performed 20, 30 or 40 hours duty and may have to immediately travel up to 40 kms to reach the place where there is a maintenance problem and fix it
The cruelty reaches its peak when workers are not given any special allowance for performing such responsibilities, nor are they given any official transport to travel. So to save their jobs they have to travel by local transport paying the fare from their own pocket.
If some worker talks to his officer about this callous behaviour then he is threatened with dismissal from his job or he can face other consequences. The workers who speak out for their rights become a target of the administration's indignation. This is possible because they have to run their homes despite the cruel working conditions. Some of the methods used by the administration are to issue the workers with a "WIT" or send out a bad ACR or transfer them far away from his home.
A few weeks back when some workers went to meet the Minister of railways to present their grievances they were not given any time. Also, after that five workers were charged under the brutal MPO 16, which reveals the brutal behaviour of the administration. An FIR was filed against them at Railways Police station in Lahore.
Stationmasters and other officer ranks are receiving promotions these days but the workers are deliberately ignored. Officers work for 6 to 8 hours while signalmen are on call 24 hours a day. Also the officers are given special allowances, which are denied, to the workers of signal department.
Another example of injustice was revealed in an incident that occurred when the Services General Manager in a meeting proposed the upgrading of officer scales and although he had requests from workers to upgrade their scales these were not even discussed in the meeting.
The importance of the Signals Department is such that whenever an accident occurs the first ones to be arrested are the workers of the Signals Department and they are investigated as if they were the only are responsible for this accident while all officers and the administration use them as scapegoats. The officers also use their authority to blackmail workers and use them for their personal needs, such as home servants and drivers etc., and the workers have to obey them if they want to carry on with their jobs.
All these problems have led to many train accidents in the past few years in which hundreds of innocent people have died. It is important to note here that these problems still exist, rather they have increased manifold due to rising inflation and the increase in prices of items of daily use. All this has overburdened the worker and this can lead to worse disasters in which hundreds of lives of passengers travelling by train are at stake.
The workers of the Signal Department are appealing to the workers of the world to come forward and show solidarity with us in our problems and send letters of protest to the Ministry of Railways of Pakistan and the administration to solve these problems.
The workers of the Signal Department are also demanding that these problems should be solved immediately otherwise they will go on strike, which would bring to a halt the workings of the entire railways department and paralyse the economy of the country.
We are also appealing to Comrade Manzoor Ahmed, Member National Assembly and president of the PTUDC, to raise the following questions in the National Assembly and fight for our cause.Â
- Why is it that today in the 21st century workers of the Signals Department are forced to work 24 hours a day to live in headquarters?
- Why are the scales of the workers of the Signals Department not up graded? If this department is not important then why are its workers arrested immediately when a train accident happens?
- Why are these workers are continuously ignored even though their responsibilities have been ever increasing since the inception of the Railways? These workers take care of and maintain the systems installed in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1991 and 1996, which makes their duties extremely complex and hard. This alone speaks for the professional excellence of these workers.
- It seems that the state and the administration wishes to downgrade the scales of these workers rather than improving them, as they bring criminal cases against them and use other measures when they speak up for their rights.
- The case filed against some workers on April 6, 2007 in the police station of the Lahore railways station under MPO 16 should be withdrawn immediately.