Puja Gift: Railway Employees To Get 78-Day Bonus

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved productivity linked bonus (PLB) equivalent to 78 days’ wages for the financial year 2022-23 to all eligible non-gazetted railway employees.

This is the 13th year in continuation that over 11 lakh employees will get 78-day wages as bonus before Durga Puja.

National Federation of Indian Railwaymen General Secretary M Raghavaiah said this is the 13th year in continuation that railwaymen are getting 78-day bonus. "Though we have sought to raise it to 80 days because the railway loadings have increased to over 1,500 million tonnes (MT) from over 1,400 MT last year, this period, it did not happen."

According to the railways, an employee would receive Rs 17,951 as bonus this year.

Railway employees including track maintainer, loco pilots, train managers (guards), station masters, supervisors, technicians, technician helpers, pointsman, ministerial staff and other Group ‘C’ staff (excluding RPF/RPSF personnel).

In recognition of this excellent performance by the railway staff, Union government has approved payment of PLB of Rs 1,968.87 crore to 1,107,346 railway employees.

However, the recently recruited railway employees over one lakh employees this year would not be eligible for getting bonus this time. They would be eligible to get bonus next year.

The performance of railways in the year 2022-2023 was very good. Railways loaded a record cargo of 1,509 MT and carried nearly 6.5 billion passengers.

Many factors contributed to this record performance. These include improvement in infrastructure due to infusion of record capex by the government in Railways, efficiency in operations and better technology etc.

Payment of PLB will act as an incentive to motivate the railway employees for working towards further improvement in performance.