The government has proposed to employ members of Samurdhi beneficiary families to guard unprotected railway crossings.
The proposal approved by Cabinet this week is to be a short term measure until the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation completes the project of installing signal lights and alarms at all unprotected crossings.
At present there are 687 unprotected crossings which have been entrusted to the police to provide security.
Each gate has in turn employed three gate keepers with an additional allowance of Rs 7500 being paid for them for the work.
But more often than not, it was found that the gate keepers had abandoned their posts and vacated their positions citing the allowances to be too low of an incentive.
Thus it was proposed that chosen Samurdhi families assign a member of the family to protect the crossing throughout the day and a payment of Rs 22,500 per month would be paid to them.
The above proposal was submitted to the Cabinet by Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, Nimal Siripala de Silva.