Railway Employee Bonus 2024: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved payment of a productivity-linked bonus for over 11.72 lakh railway employees, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

In a special meeting, the Union Cabinet also approved a revised productivity-linked reward scheme for major port authorities.

The Cabinet approved a productivity-linked bonus equivalent to 78 days’ wages for railway employees, amounting to Rs 2,029 crore.

The decision will benefit around Rs 12 lakh employees.

The amount will be paid to various categories, of railway staff like track maintainers, loco pilots, train managers (guards), station masters, supervisors, technicians, technician helpers, pointsman, ministerial staff and other group XC staff.

The payment of PLB acts as an incentive to motivate the railway employees for working towards improvement in the performance of the Railways.

Payment of PLB to eligible railway employees is made each year before the Durga Puja/ Dusshera holidays. This year also, PLB amount equivalent to 78 days’ wages is being paid to about 11.72 lakh non-gazetted Railway employees.

The maximum amount payable per eligible railway employee is Rs.17,951 for 78 days.

The performance of railways in the year 2023-2024 was very good. Railways loaded a record cargo of 1588 million tonnes and carried nearly 6.7 billion Passengers.

Many factors contributed to this record performance. These include improvement in infrastructure due to the infusion of record Capex by the government in railways, efficiency in operations and better technology, etc.

PLR for Ports

The Cabinet has also approved a revised productivity-linked reward (PLR) Scheme, aimed at benefiting around 20,704 employees of major port authorities and dock labour boards for the period from 2020-21 to 2025-26. With a total financial outlay of Rs 200 crore, the scheme seeks to boost productivity and recognise the efforts of port and dock workers.

Productivity-linked reward (PLR) is an existing scheme for the employees/workers of major port trusts and dock labour board, wherein financial reward is being granted to employees/workers on yearly basis based on the settlement arrived at between management and the labour federations of the major port authorities.