Piyush Goyal proposes higher pay, rank for Railway General Managers
What's the story
Union Minister Piyush Goyal has proposed a higher rank and pay scale for Railway General Managers, making them equivalent to Secretaries in Central government and at par with the state Chief Secretaries, Ministry source said.
This is a second time in three years that a Railway Minister has made such a proposal for zonal GMs.
Earlier, Suresh Prabhu had suggested the same in 2015.
Information
Goyal has suggested a string of administrative changes
Goyal has readied a proposal in which he has suggested a string of administrative changes one of which is the introduction of a post in Railway Board to exclusively focus on safety issues of national transporter, along with the upgradation of zonal GMs' posts.
Better coordination
Higher rank would ensure better coordination between departments
"The new changes would ensure better coordination between departments as the top officials in the state (Chief Secretary) and Zonal Railways (GMs) would be of the same rank," a source said.
"Often the GMs whose jurisdiction spreads across states have to deal with the Chief Secretaries and we believe that they should be at par for them to work out issues," added the source.
Zonal level
Now, lots of issues would resolve at zonal level
The source also pointed out that currently with the GMs at a lower rank than the Chief Secretaries, a lot of issues which should have been resolved at the zonal level gets bumped to the Board level for resolution.
With the GMs at par with the states' topmost bureaucrat, he said, operational issues would be resolved in the field itself.