Describing 14 lakh railway employees as the “leader and engine” of the PSU behemoth’s growth, the government on Friday announced a slew of welfare measures for them which included setting up 17 medical colleges to give higher education avenue for the “new generation”.

The Railway Budget also spoke about setting up scholarships for higher education of girl children of Group D staff and seven nursing colleges on railway land so as to facilitate the wards of employees in finding a “good vocational avenue”. “Medical colleges are planned to be established attached to existing railway hospitals through PPP, to give higher education facilities to new generation of railway children,” railway minister Mamata Banerjee said in her budget speech.

The locations for the medical colleges include Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad, Bilaspur, Lucknow, Bhubhaneswar, Jodhpur, Dibrugarh, Nagpur and Ahmedabad. The nursing colleges will be come up in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Lucknow, Secunderabad, Kolkata and Jabalpur.

Another announcement which would bring cheers to the employees is the announcement of construction of 6,560 staff quarters in this fiscal. For sport-lovers, the minister plans to develop indoor stadia in all major railway divisions and zones, including Bongaon on the Indo-Bangladesh border. The minister also empowered general managers to sanction up to Rs 4 lakh for special medical treatment of employees.

Banerjee also announced that the railways will provide dormotaries for women and men who accompany patients.