The performance and working style of the South Central Railway (SCR) in the last couple of years has generated a buzz in railway circles across the country.
Bagging the Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant for best all-round performance has been the icing on the cake for a zone which has topped charts in punctuality, safety, environment friendly measures, innovative steps and staff connect.
The amiable General Manager of SCR, Vinod Kumar Yadav, tells us what is on his plate on the months ahead in this interview:
Question: What will be the main focus this year?
Answer: Infrastructure development. It (SCR) anyway has seen a three-fold increase in new lines, doubling, tripling and electrification in the last few years. We have finalised plans to lay new rail lines to an extent of 300 km. Wherever the State government is giving us land, we are going ahead without capacity enhancements because we have noticed some lines have been running trains of excess of 150% capacity.
What about safety and maintenance issues?
Safety is priority even if it affects punctuality. We are going to maintain a fine balance by planning mega traffic blocks — time when trains are not allowed to run for maintenance work — scientifically to complete various works at one go and during non-peak hours. Already these steps have resulted in rail breakages, weld failures etc., coming down drastically.
What is the status on eliminating Unmanned Level Crossings?
We have set a scorching pace in this aspect by removing 30 a month of the total 268 in the last three months. Of the remaining 132, we are going to complete 90 this month alone and the rest by August end, much ahead of our September deadline. We have gone for pre-cast construction methods to reduce the work time.
Any new measures to improve cleanliness?
We have introduced mechanised cleaning in bigger stations and finalising tenders to go for semi-mechanised cleaning methods in other stations as well. We are going to a cluster of eight to 10 stations to get bigger parties for the work. To tackle issues relating to bio-toilets, we have gone for vacuum cleaning in addition to having bigger meshes.
What was the message from Railway Minister Piyush Goyal during his recent visit?
Never before a Railway Minister had spent more than two hours interacting with the officers and other staff. He was more keen to talk to the younger officers and take their inputs. It galvanised our officers and staff to push up our punctuality substantially to 85% from 75%. Our aim is to attain 90%.
