The Nepal Railway Company has sought the government’s approval to hire 10 technical staff including crew members to keep the Jayanagar-Kurtha cross-border railway service running even after the staff from Konkan Railways Corporation Limited (KRCL) who are currently manning the rail service are gone.

As per a contract, the Indian company KRCL has been providing technical services including 26 staff and crew members to run the rail service.

The original contract with the Indian company expired on December 26 last year but the Nepal Railway Company (NRC) reached an agreement with the KRCL whereby the Indian staff will continue to operate the rail service for three more months at most.

As an alternative arrangement, the NRS has proposed to individually hire a few trained Indian nationals to operate the rail service. The NRS said it could not find qualified Nepali technical manpower to operate the rail.

“After our recent board meeting, we have sent a request to the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport [and the Ministry of Finance] to give approval for hiring 10 Indian staff on contract,” said Niranjan Jha, general manager of the NRC. “We plan to hire them individually at a third of the price that we have been paying to the KRCL.”

According to him, the company has proposed an average salary at INR75,000 per month per person,” he said. The proposal was sent nearly three weeks ago.

The company plans to hire four locomotive pilots, four station managers, one track engineer, and one air conditioner engineer or technician.

The company first sought to hire Nepali staff by publishing a vacancy notice on November 27 last year. Jha said they could not find qualified Nepali individuals and have decided to hire Indian staffers.

As per the Labour Act 2017, Nepali employers can hire foreign staffers if qualified individuals could not be found in the country.

“If in spite of such an advertisement, no application is received from any Nepali citizen as prescribed or any Nepali citizen cannot be selected, the employer may make an application, accompanied by the evidence thereof, to the Department of Labour for the work permit for employing foreign labour,” section 22 of the Labour Act-2017 states.

“The process of hiring foreign staffers is lengthy so we could not do it on time,” said Jha.

But the physical infrastructure Ministry is yet to seek the approval of the Finance Ministry.

“The proposal is still under consideration and has yet to be forwarded to the Ministry of Finance,” said Gopal Prasad Sigdel, secretary at the physical infrastructure ministry. “There are some issues needing clarification before we could forward it to the finance ministry.”

The NRC has hired 115 Nepali staff including gate men, point men, and sweepers among others. But the technical side is handled by Indian staffers.

According to Sigdel, even the Indian embassy had expressed concerns about a possible disruption in the rail service and its negative implications.

The railway came into operation in April 2022 when it was jointly flagged off by then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was considered a milestone in strengthening cross-border connectivity between Nepal and India.

Although the railway is operational, it has been running at a loss since the start and the government has refused to provide extra funds. “We have not received even a single penny for the past 18 months,” Jha told the Post earlier this month. “So we are requesting the KRCL to reduce its fees.”

Jayanagar-Kurtha railway is Nepal's first cross-border broad gauge rail link and the first rail link between the two countries to be operationalized since the rail services were halted in 2014 for infrastructure upgrade.