Railway staff protest: 32 trains canceled due to loco master, guard shortage

The railway running staff's ongoing demonstration led to the cancellation of 32 trains scheduled for Wednesday on different routes, including Dhaka, Chattogram, Narayanganj, and Lalmonirhat.

Ansar Ali, Chattogram Divisional Transport Officer of Bangladesh Railway, said the multiple train schedules were canceled for loco master and guard shortages because of railway staff stopping their overtime work.

Running staff including loco masters, assistant loco masters, sub loco masters or shunting loco masters, carriage attendants, guards, and ticket-checkers, stopped working after eight hours of duty from Tuesday as they had previously announced, demanding restoration of their mileage benefits for working overtime hours.

Chattogram railway sources said 10 Dhaka-bound trains and six Chattogram-bound trains have been canceled. The railway also canceled two trains on the Lalmonirhat-Santahar route, eight trains on the Dhaka-Narayanganj-Dhaka route, and three roundtrips of Chittagong University shuttle trains.  

Demanding restoration of their previous benefits, the running staff brought out a protest procession and then held a rally at the Chattogram railway station on Wednesday.

At the rally, Mohammad Sazzad Hossian, organizing secretary of the Railway Sramik League's central committee, said, "We will go on full work abstention from 31 January if the mileage benefits are not restored by then."

The running staff usually performs overtime duty beyond an eight-hour schedule upon the shortage of manpower and gets a special overtime allowance.

However, the finance ministry on 3 November last year reduced the 150-year-old allowance practice because the latest software cannot handle entries for more than 3,000 miles a month.