Title - Railway will rehire retired railwaymen to man unmanned crossings

To avoid any mishaps on all vulnerable unmanned crossings, railway has set up a committee that will rehire the retired employees familiar with the job. The decision of rehiring is taken because of staff crunch. 

Currently there are 5,792 unmanned level crossings across the rail network. Out of these there are 3,479 unmanned crossings are over broad gauge. After the tragic incident of Kushinagar in which 13 school children were killed, railway has decided that till the time it successfully eliminates all the unmanned level crossings by constructing low height subways (LHS), road over bridges (ROBs) and road under bridges (RUBs), all these crossings will remain manned.

The target to eliminate all the unmanned crossings was earlier set in the end of 2020 which now has been revised as 2019 - 20. 

Gujarat has maximum unmanned level crossings (1,700) followed by Uttar Pradesh (912), Bihar (742), Rajasthan (464) West Bengal (314) and Madhya Pradesh (255).