Panels of ministers, secretaries to address officials'

A committee of secretaries (CoS) and a Group of Ministers (GoM) will address concerns of officials during restructuring of the railways that will end departmentalism, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said in Rajya Sabha on Friday.

The Union Cabinet had on December 24 approved the downsizing of the strength of the Railway Board from eight to five, including the chairman, and merging its different cadres and departments into a single entity.

"A committee of secretaries and a group of ministers will address any concerns any officials may have and will ensure that everybody's interests are fully protected," Goyal said in reply to a supplementary during the Question Hour in the Upper House.

He said the restructuring was being done to make Indian Railways a strong organisation after several rounds of discussions over two-and-a-half years, including an interaction in December with over 1,000 officials in Delhi and outside.

Terming departmentalism "bane of inefficiency in organisation", he said it will end with the restructuring.

He said, "Eight different departments worked as verticals, as silos without any inter-relation with each other in terms of working as one group for a common cause. This departmentalism has gone to the extent that if there used to be an accident there used to be a fight as who is responsible for the accident."