Next financial year, Railways to double trackrelated work
: As a part of its efforts to improve passenger safety and punctuality, the Indian Railways is looking to double its efforts to carry out electrification and track related work for the next financial year.
Railway board chairman Ashwani Lohani said that railways is looking to increase track related work to 12,000 km in next financial year compared to 5,300 km carried out in 2016-17. “This will not only improve punctuality but also ensure passenger safety. Similarly, almost 50% of the electrification work has been completed and Railways aims to complete 6,000 more km in 2018-19, 7,000 km more in 2019-20 and 10,500 km each in next two years,” Lohani said and added changes in work culture was important to expedite pending work.
Lohani said that by the end of this calendar year, problem of vibration in coaches will be solved as they are charging the draft gear, which was causing the inconvenience. He added that unmanned level crossings will be removed by December 2018 while work on bio toilets is scheduled to be completed by March 2019.
“All this effort can be seen in the accidents figure. Number of consequential train accidents during 2017-18 (73) is 30% less than the figure recorded in 2016-17 (104). Fatalities came down to 57 from 238 (-76%). The declining trend is discernible in 2018-19 (April-Sept) also, which witnessed 34 accidents and 21 fatalities,” Lohani said.
He said that along with passenger comfort, the railways is set to run four more new trains in 2018. “We have cut down on frills and ended VIP culture. Streamlining the process of registering vigilance cases and issuing vigilance clearance had also helped us in gaining the employee confidence. We have managed to change the image of railways through cultural reforms,” Lohani said.
With the Union Cabinet’s approval for redevelopment of railway stations, the railways is all set to issue tender for redevelopment of about 500 stations where, besides improvements in facilities, commercial development will also be taken up, Lohani added.