{"id":627,"date":"2019-09-16T23:04:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T17:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=627"},"modified":"2019-09-16T23:04:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T17:34:24","slug":"privatization-of-railways-will-harm-both-consumers-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=627","title":{"rendered":"Privatization of Railways will harm both consumers & workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global transport union caution against privatization of Indian Rlys<\/strong><\/p>\n

The present Indian government is forcing us to go on strike -NFIR<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"NEW DELHI:<\/strong>\u00a0Global Railway and Transport Unions cautioned<\/strong>\u00a0against partial or complete privatization of the Indian Railways, adding that it could be “damaging” for the country.<\/p>\n

At a meeting of the\u00a0International Transport Workers Federation<\/strong>\u00a0(ITF) here, representatives of International Railways and Transport Unions raised concerns over the government of India’s attempts to privatize Indian Railways.<\/p>\n

Mick Whelan,<\/strong>\u00a0representing Britain’s trade union for train drivers, said the British Railways had been privatized in a number of areas through a private-public partnership (PPP) model. “The revenue targets set 15 years ago are still to be met. Instead, there has been a dip in the quality of amenities and service. So, no one has benefited from the exercise,” Whelan said opposing any kind of privatization in the sector.<\/p>\n

Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani,<\/strong>\u00a0who was also present in the meeting, assured the unions that there was no move to privatize the national transporter and it would remain in the public sector, representatives of the Indian Railway unions at the meeting claimed.<\/p>\n

Lohani, however, said the railways was looking at foreign investment in areas like technological up-gradation and modernization, adding that primarily railways will remain a state transporter, a representative of All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF) said.<\/p>\n

Speaking about Argentina where the entire public services were privatized between 1958-1989,\u00a0Julio Adolfo Sosa,<\/strong>\u00a0president, Argentinian Railway Workers Union, said its effects had been disastrous.<\/p>\n

“While in 1958 in Argentina, 100 percent of freight was carried by railways and the railway line was more than 7,000 km long. Now only 820 km is left. The private players never bothered to maintain the tracks. Today, running lines exist only in the big cities in the country. But, now, it has again been taken over by the government and the rebuilding has begun,” she said.<\/p>\n

AIRF General Secretary Shiv Gopal Mishra<\/strong>\u00a0said the global experience has shown that privatization has harmed both consumers and railway workers, without much benefits to even private players.<\/p>\n

S. N. Malik of National Federation of Indian Railwaymen<\/strong>\u00a0(NFIR) said, “The government is forcing us to go on strike. Young railway employees are coming out to protest against the new pension policy and the PPP model.”<\/p>\n

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), comprising representatives of global transport organizations from 147 countries, has also formed a committee to work on a detailed report on privatization of transport sector and its effects. The report will be submitted at a global conference in October 2018 in Singapore.<\/p>\n

Source: PTI<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global transport union caution against privatization of Indian Rlys The present Indian government is forcing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koo_publish_custom_meta":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}