Railway scraps minimum qualification for jobs to wives, widows of employees

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The railways has done away with the provision of minimum educational qualification for giving jobs on compassionate grounds to the wives or widows of its employees, who died in service or retired for medical reasons.

Under the present norms, the minimum educational qualification required to be eligible for such employment is Class 10 for Level-1 or Group 'D' jobs.

In a recent communication, the Board said there were a lot of queries from zonal railways about cases in which the wife or the widow of the employee didn't have the minimum required qualification for Level-1 job on compassionate grounds.

After deliberating on the queries for some time, the Board decided the rule for mandatory minimum educational qualification be scrapped.

"The matter was under consideration of this ministry for quite some time. It has now been decided that in case of appointment of a wife not having requisite minimum educational qualification she will be placed in the Level - I of the pay matrix...without insisting on fulfillment of educational qualification norms," says the Railway Board letter dated April 6.

The board has said that these appointments can be made provided the appointing authority is satisfied that the duties of the post against which the appointment is being made can be performed with help of some on-job training.

Jobs on compassionate grounds are given to wives or widows of employees who died during service or retired as medically unfit.