Representational image of passengers interacting with an official at a booking counter at Mangaluru Central Railway Station | Photo Credit: H.S. Manjunath
In a move to bridge the communication gap between front-line staff and local travellers, Southern Railway has decided to teach the regional language of every State to its employees belonging to other States.
According to sources in the Railways, the move follows issues involving some staff not being conversant in the local language resulting in arguments and complaints, particularly at ticket booking counters.
Realising that several employees posted in Tamil Nadu and Kerala hailed from other States and were not conversant in the regional or local language, Southern Railway in a circular said it was imperative that they acquired a working knowledge of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu or Kannada to help them serve the public and the organisation better.
Training module
Instructions were given to heads of all departments, workshops, recruitment and training centres, Divisional Railway Managers of Chennai, Tiruchi, Madurai, Salem, Thiruvananthapuram and Palghat to develop a training module for basic learning of spoken regional languages (depending on the Divisions) for these employees, and incorporate the same in both the induction and refresher training programmes. Training institutes were told to create the content under the ‘Karmayogi’ e-learning platform.
In a communication, the Zonal Railways said the use of ‘Bhasha Sangam’ mobile application (developed by the Ministry of Education, Government of India in collaboration with ‘MyGov’ India) may also be popularised for easy learning by the employees hailing from other States.
The sources said many ticket booking staff, Travelling Ticket Examiners, catering staff of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, Loco Pilots and others belonged to predominantly Hindi-speaking States and lacked basic working knowledge of the regional language.
A senior railway official said besides language issues between some employees and travelling public, there were communication problems at work too. In a recent case reported in Salem Division where the Loco Pilot of a relief engine was instructed by the Chief Loco Inspector to run at 50 kmph instead of the prescribed safety speed limit of 15 kmph during the day and 10 kmph at night, the conversation took place in Hindi.
“It appeared that the Chief Loco Inspector was trying to speak in whatever Hindi he knew with the Loco Pilot who belongs to a North Indian State. Understanding and being conversant in local working language also helps in implementing safety instructions at times,” the official who did not want to be quoted said.
