RAILWAY SAMACHAR

An Open Letter to Railway Minister/ Railway Board/IRISET

To fill the knowledge and talent shortage, Railway Staff College needs to market Track Engineering, Electrification, Signaling Design courses to universities and colleages nationwide. As you are aware that On board signaling equipments are getting sophisticated. We need to do thorough job of preparing our workforce for demanding requirements. I hope you will support my ideas.

New technologies adapted for the on-board control systems have inputs from leading edge expertise in the fields of software, hardware and communications;however the current employees ts involved may not have the adequate understanding on signalling and operation.

Railway Staff College and IRISET need to take proactive role in ramping up the job oriented courses in Track Engineering, Signaling Design and implementation aspects rapidly. Here are some example of the companies that are offering courses, we understand IR too offers only basic and some intermediate courses but Railway Staff College and IRISET needs to do better job of reaching to schools, colleges and private sector to market the courses and stay on top of the latest technologies.

http://www.signet-solutions.com/irse-licencing/

http://www.railtech.co.uk/open-course-programme/

Railway board, IRISET and Railway Staff College should join hands and solve the talent shortage by recruiting top notch trainers/ Professors from IIT train them in Europe on latest technologies and develop high quality courseware and teaching materials. Later these course can then be marketed to REC and other Engineering Colleges.

General impression of the public is Railway Staff College/ IRISET is both the institutions are not doing much to develop the future pipeline of trained manpower. Look at China it is sending 350 engineers next month to California for building sophisticated High Speed Rail Network. Indian Railway should develop a comprehensive workforce strategy to address not just local needs but alo international needs.

Railway Staff College and IRISET should be asked to act immediately.