The Indian Railways is doing exceedingly well in both freight loading and passenger traffic despite the economic slow down faced by the country. It witnessed high growth rate in the last few years. The revenue earned from both the fronts continues to grow at a fast rate this year too.
Till last year the Indian Railways was witnessing an increase of about eight per cent in freight traffic every year. Last year, despite the economic recession, it did witness increase of over five per cent in freight traffic. This trend is continuing this year too, Praveen Kumar, Member/ Mechanical, Railway Board, New Delhi, told presspersons here on Thursday.
The high growth rate witnessed has encouraged the Railways to go for more investment, so that it will not lag behind in the national expectations. Referring to the various development programmes on the cards, Mr. Praveen Kumar said that two dedicated freight corridor projects - Eastern Freight Corridor and Western Freight Corridor – are coming up fast.
The Railways has sought funding through various sources.
Already Japan has come forward to fund the Western Freight Corridor. Alongside of these two corridors, industrial belts are also being created. The corridors and industrial project is expected to create lot of job opportunities.
The five Railway Workshops involved in the production of wagons in the country manufactured about 1,500 wagons a year. There is a great demand for the wagons in the country. In order to cater to the increasing requirement of passenger coaches, the Railway Board has directed them to take serious initiative to produce more wagons to bridge the gap between production and requirement. These workshops have started manufacturing more wagons using the surplus staff.
On the locomotives front, he said the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW), Varanasi and the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) are manufacturing about 250 locos each this year. Last year together they manufactured 450 locos. The in-house capacity of DLW and CLW has been stretched to the maximum level.
Referring to the works of setting the new Rail Coach Factory at Palakkad in Kerala, Mr. Kumar said that the Kerala Government promised to make 1,000 acres of land available for this project, estimated to cost Rs. 1,215 crore.
At present there is some problem in the acquisition of land due to objection raised in some quarters. “We had a meeting with the Kerala Government recently and the project is very much on the card. The policy of the present government is that all the projects sanctioned during the previous regime should be continued,” he said.
The Golden Rock Railway Workshop played a key role in the overall development of Indian Railways. It is absolutely on the top of the list in performance among all the 44 workshops in the country. The modernisation of the workshop undertaken on an outlay of Rs. 90 crore will enable the GOC to further improve its efficiency.
Earlier, in the workshop, Mr. Kumar, accompanied by M. S. Jayanth, General Manager, Southern Railway, visited various shops located inside to ascertain their functioning, the manufacturing facilities available there and the kind of activities they were involved in. J. Digi, Chief Workshop Manager, explained to him the various achievements of the workshop.
