Taking PM's project forward, Railways completes training of over 51,000 frontline staff

The ministry of railways was the first to respond to the Prime Minister's call for a change in the attitudes and skills of government employees under the mission, writes Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi:Indian Railways on Thursday said it has provided citizen-centric training to over 51,000 frontline staff under Mission Karmayogiwhich aims to transform their “intention to serve” and build their “ability to serve”. Dubbed the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, the Union Cabinet approved the mission in September 2020 as a new capacity-building scheme for civil servants aimed at upgrading the post-recruitment training mechanism of the officers and employees at all levels.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had then said that the exercise would “radically” improve the government’s human resource management practices and asserted that it will use state-of-the-art infrastructure to augment the capacity of civil servants. The ministry of railways was the first to respond to the Prime Minister's call for a change in the attitudes and skills of government employees.

“The mission has been designed to play a big role in improving their individual performances as well as strengthen the image of the organization as responsive and efficient,” the railways said in a statement. According to the railway ministry, the 51,000 employees have been trained in the field by 1,000 Master Trainers identified earlier across the 68 railway divisions in the country.

The training of the Master Trainers at the Indian Railways Institute of Transport Management started on February 28 this year. The ministry sought to train about one lakh frontline staff in a six-month period. Till now, eight batches of Master Trainers comprising 49 divisions have been covered under the project, said officials, adding that experts in capacity building and behavioural transformation have been roped in to develop customized texts and audio-visual content to impart the training.

The extensive use of information technology will ensure 'any time, any place and any device learning'while maintaining strict norms for monitoring and assessment, said the railway ministry. The developed course content has been onboarded on iGoT, the online training platform of the central government for training the railway personnel in the coming years. The iGoT platform will act as a launchpad for the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), which will enable a comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels, the officials added.