Southern Railway to upgrade staff training centres

Railways has decided to upgrade all existing training centres as centres of excellence to provide quality training to its employees. Moreover, it has also asked divisions to generate more revenue through redevelopment of railway properties and allowed them to monetise land and buildings through commercial use.
Senior officials of Trichy division said the railway board wanted even training centres to explore the possibilities of generating revenue by providing training to external customers. At present, there were 62 main training centres and 238 other training centres for railways spread across the country. However, the multiplicity of centres led to dissipation of resources resulting in poor infrastructure. Being located in remote areas, many of these centres, especially the smaller ones, were not easily accessible. These factors acted as deterrents to attracting motivated and effective instructors, which was the most crucial input for providing quality training. All these have had a negative impact on the training provided at railway training centres, the officials said.
Hence, the railway authorities expect consolidation of training infrastructure to help in utilising the resources judiciously and providing integrated training to the employees. Moreover, training of staff from multiple departments on one campus would encourage cross-functional learning and inculcate in them a feeling of camaraderie. For that, railway board has decided to develop the existing centres as centres of excellence’. All the existing zonal railway training institutes and multi-disciplinary zonal training centres were to be developed into multi-disciplinary zonal training institutes. For that, the divisional railway authorities have been instructed to identify a suitable place by taking into consideration factors like geographic location, feasibility of upgrading existing training centres and connectivity.
The centre of excellence should have adequate classrooms, model rooms, practical training facilities, hostel rooms as well as sports and recreational facilities. In order to augment resources, training centres could explore the possibilities of generating revenue by providing training to external customers. The divisional officials have also been advised to send the detailed implementation plan soon.

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