RAILWAY MINISTER CALLS UPON FOR EFFICIENT INVENOTRY
MANAGEMENT IN RAILWAYS
The two-day 56th
periodical Conference of Controllers of Stores of Zonal Railways
and Railway Production Units with the Railway Board began here
today. The Railway Minister, Shri Nitish Kumar, both the Ministers
of State for Railways Shri O. Rajagopal and Shri Digvijay Singh,
Chairman and Members of Railway Board were among those who addressed
the Conference.
In his address, Shri
Nitish Kumar called upon the Controller of Stores to play a pro-active
role in providing materials at the right time with right quality
and at right price so as to bring economy and efficiency. He said
that inventory management is an important area for the Railways
and an efficient inventory management can bring lot of savings
and avoid blocking of capital. He said Stores department performs
a valuable function of planning procurement and making available
the material that are required for manufacture, operation and
maintenance of the vast railway system. He said that total purchases
represent about 30 per cent of the total working expenses of the
Railways and hence there is need to streamline the system for
best results. Laying emphasis on checking the leakage of revenue
in scrap disposal, the Minister pointed out that a strong monitoring
system should be developed to check this menace. He stressed the
need for computerisation for timely and quick accountal of all
types of scrap. The Minister instructed the Railway Board to expeditiously
implement the recommendations of the Committee of officers which
was formed to recommend ways and means of checking all loopholes
and plugging the leakages. Shri Nitish Kumar also emphasised the
need to have Electronic Weigh bridges at all scrap disposal points.
He said such bridges should be kept in functional conditions and
the responsibility should be fixed for any lapses or failure in
keeping these bridges fully functional.
In his
address, Minister of State for Railways, Shri Digvijay Singh said
that there is a need to bring more transparency in the functioning
of the stores department. He said that with the creation of Special
Safety Fund to the tune of 17,000 crore rupees, there is greater
responsibility on the store officers to efficiently and economically
spend the money to achieve the best results for the welfare of
the passengers. In his speech, Shri Rajagopalji hoped that the
Conference will address important issues to achieve the overall
objective of economy and making the material available at right
time to achieve safety, security and punctuality. Chairman, Railway
board Shri I.I.M.S Rana in his address emphasised on introducing
modern systems of management and increased use of computerisation,
e-commerce for the effective and efficient inventory management.
Member Mechanical, Shri M. Dhasarathy elaborated on the vision
statement for stores department indicating short and long term
strategies.
