The Ministry of Railways has successfully concluded, what can be called as one of the world’s largest recruitment exercise, for filling up critical safety and operational posts and has reached its completion stage. Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) invited online applications against Centralized Employment Notification for a total 64,371 combined vacancies of Assistant Loco Pilots (ALPs) & Technicians.
A total of 47,45,176 online applications were received. The scheme of selection consisted of 3 -stages computer based tests followed by medical examination (which is one of the stringent medical examinations considering the level of distant vision/colour vision and alertness required from a Loco Pilot) and document verification of short listed candidates.
Panel of selected candidates has been approved for 56,378 Candidates (26968 ALPs, 28410 Technicians) out of 64371 vacancies (27795 ALPs, 64371 Technicians). Appointment letters have been issued to 40,420 candidates (22223 ALPs, 18197 Technicians). Training of newly recruited 19,120 candidates (10123 Assistant Loco Pilots (ALPs), 8997 Technicians) to resume as soon as COVID lock down related measures ease out. Training process take 17 weeks for ALPs, 06 months for Technicians. Joining Letters were issued to candidates before Lockdown but some candidates could not join due to CORONA outbreak and Lockdown.
All newly recruited employees will be given appointment in Railway as per the due procedure in a phased manner. The training of fresh appointees is required because Railway is an operational department and safety of train operations is paramount. Training includes class room training followed by field training followed by Testing of the competence before deployment on working post. Since training is given batch wise considering the capacity constraints of class room, hostel, library, instructors, etc. It has to be done in a phased manner by optimum utilization of training resources.
Due to CORONA outbreak, all form of training has been suspended to follow the social distancing norms and in order to limit the pandemics. Training will resume as and when the situation permits.
RRBs follow the practice of direct and instantaneous communication with candidates through regular updates on web-sites and individual SMSs and emails, whenever required. Candidates are appealed to refer to these official communications only and not be misguided by false propaganda and rumors being circulated on social media, many of which are aimed at misleading the genuine candidates and adversely affecting their preparation for examination.