Southern Railways begins probe on errant TTEs

An SR officer who is part of the probe revealed to DTNext that a few cases had also been recorded in divisions like Tiruchy where TTEs claimed allowances without even traveling on designated routes. Railway sources said there were also cases of a few senior TTEs engaging their junior colleagues as proxies to make up for their absence on the route. The official under condition of anonymity confided, “All that a squad TTE needs to do is to book a couple of cases and collect a few hundred rupees as fine per day and remit the same daily. They achieve their target in a couple of days, but they will claim full allowance for all working days.” 

While a former squad TTE put the daily allowance of such cases at around Rs 700 per TTE, some even get the customary booking of one case per day done through their junior colleagues. “They merely remit the collected sum and record their attendance,” he added.

The scam drew official attention after they noticed an abnormal pattern in the TTEs remittance. A rough estimate put the monthly TA claim of a senior squad TTE at Rs 18,000 per month. In addition to a heavy pay-out, the railway department has also been suffering on the service front with travellers not being able to get their grievances redressed. 

Railway headquarters has now instructed all its divisional managers to do an audit of TTEs’ performance individually and send a report. When asked, chief public relations officer, SR, P R Dhananjayan said, “Internal matters of the department will not generally come to us.”