Over 19 Lakh Women And 188 Transgenders Among 1.15 Crore Applicants For Railways Grade IV Jobs

In a massive exercise, about 1.15 crore applicants, including over 19 lakh women and 188 transgenders, have applied for the Railway Grade IV jobs, which include track maintainers, assistants in hospitals, loco shed, depot and pointsman, among other Level 1 category.

The computer-based test (CBT) would begin from 17 August to fill up a total of 103,769 vacant posts in the Level 1 category in the Railways, for which the minimum qualification is either Class 10 pass or an ITI certificate in any trade.

However, according to the Railways, there are many graduates, post-graduates and candidates with B.Tech degrees who have also applied for the Grade IV jobs.

There are about 19.5 lakh women candidates and 188 transgenders who have applied for the railway Level 1 jobs in 17 categories.

While maximum number (40,721) of posts are in track maintainer job popularly known as gangman, followed by assistant pointsman posts (14,870) and workshop assistant (11,268) posts, there are vacant posts of assistants in hospital (1,302), assistant loco shed (2,204), assistant Signal and Telecom (5,488) and assistant track machine (3,157) in the Railways for which the CBT would be held.

The five-phase CBT will be conducted at about 600 centres across the country.

Gangman job is crucial for the train operation as it is the track maintainer who conducts the manual check on tracks to detect rail defects. Though there are machines to examine the track defect, the Railways still depend upon gangman for regular track maintenance.

The Railways has assigned the task to the software giant TCS for conducting the massive examination for which it would charge about Rs 200 per candidate.

It would cost about Rs 225 crore to the Railways to carry out the CBT in five phases all over the country.

Those who qualify in CBT would appear for a physical test expected in January 2023.