NEW DELHI, April 20 (Xinhua) -- The state-owned Indian Railways has come up with a wearable GPS device for its track maintainers to keep a tab on their movement during duty hours.
"The GPS device, resembling a fitness band, will help keep a track of the track maintainers through a mobile phone application so that they are not misused by senior railway officials in doing odd jobs," a railway official said Friday.
The move comes in the wake of reports that senior railway officials have been using track maintainers as domestic helps against service norms.
The Indian Railways is one of the world's largest train networks, criss-crossing the country from north to south. It operates some 9,000 passenger trains and carries nearly 23 million passengers every day.
This vast public enterprise can be referred to as a semi-state. It runs schools, hospitals, has its own police force and construction companies, and has 1.3 million people on its payroll, making it the seventh biggest employer in the world.
However, train disasters are quite common in India as much of the colonial-era rail infrastructure is out of date. A number of people are killed in train accidents, mostly derailments, across the country every year.
In 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government pledged 137 billion U.S. dollars over five years to modernize and expand the railways.