RailTel officials ensure tech support during lockdown

By Anand Singh

New Delhi, April 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) Family members of Rama Shankar have not seen him for about a fortnight as he has been staying in his office since the nationwide lockdown was announced on March 23 to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Speaking to IANS, Shankar, who works at the RailTel and has been posted at Gurugram data centre, said, "Sometimes it gets lonely, so we make either audio or video calls to our family members."

He said senior collegaues call them regularly to keep up the motivation.

Speaking about the work at the data centre, Shankar said the work load has increased as the on-ground staff is very limited.

"With support from the team, we are managing all the work," he said.

RailTel, a 'mini Ratna' PSU of the Indian Railways handles crucial communication system, video conferencing and implementation of e-office platform as well as storing important data for the national transporter in its two data centres in Haryana's Gurugram and in Telangana's Secunderabad.

"Running the data centre is extremely crucial and we cannot afford any faults here. That is why we are keeping ourselves motivated," he said, adding the data centre is being cleaned and disinfected regularly.

Besides Rama Shankar, there are other employees of RailTel who are also out in the field to ensure connectivity to the railways.

RailTel officials said all the video conferencing service is being supported by RailTel's TPaaS NOC (National Observation Centre) at Secunderabad.

Ravi Kumar, team leader of TPaaS NOC, is now handling more work with only 50 per cent of workforce available in the office.

"We participate in video conferencing with railway officials even late at night for which we have one official, enabling us to ensure video conferencing 24X7," Kumar said.

However, the bigger challenge for the officials is to persuade their families to get accustomed to the situation. "My family is supportive, but they are very worried about my safety. Every evening, when I reach home, my daughters come running to me, but I avoid them and rush to take a bath first."

"It is too much for me to ask them to stay away from me, even for sometime, but I have to do this for their sake," Kumar said.

Commenting on the arrangements made by the RailTel for their staff, spokesperson Sucharita Pradhan said: "Some of our staff are staying in our Gurugram office to ensure ground support. RailTel has provided them beds and food."

She said in the current crisis situation, ensuring the availability of essential commodities and associated supply chain is of paramount importance for which railway freight operations need to run without any hiccups.

She said in such a scenario it is all the more important for keeping the network and data centre operations stable so that it doesn't hamper the railway freight movement and communication across the country.

She further stated that a large number of banks are also dependent on RailTel services for their data communications needs.

The RailTel spokesperson said that to run the two data centres and four regional network operation centres and one central network operation centre, RailTel management has deployed minimal physical workforce of two to three employees for whom rosters have been prepared and duties assigned on a rotation basis.

To facilitate meetings from home, video conferencing facilities have been installed at the residence of 15 General Managers and head of five production units of railways for meetings with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Railways Suresh Angadi and Chairman Railway Board V.K. Yadav.

The RailTel officials said the same service is also being used for coordination between GMs and DRMs and other officers who are participating through either telepresence or WebEx from their residence.

Pranoy Mondal, Senior Manager of RailTel, who handled the video conferencing equipment installation in the Eastern region said, "Lockdown posed a number of challenges, but we managed to set up the video conferencing system quickly."

He said that the RailTel also upgraded the Railnet speed to facilitate high- speed internet for railway officials at their residences at some places and apart from these special arrangements, the regular maintenance work, fault rectifications, maintaining links for banks are being taken up.

"We have been given proper protective gears like masks, gloves for working the fields for these kinds of maintenance and repair works. We are maintaining social distancing and taking all kinds of precautionary measures while we are working," Mondal said.

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)

Source: IANS