ITISH KUMAR ASKS RAILWAYS TO DO AGGRESSIVE
MARKETING FOR INCREASING REVENUES
HOLDS
CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE MEETING ON RAILWAYS
The Union Minister
of Railways, Shri Nitish Kumar has said that General Managers
of Zonal Railways have been directed to do aggressive marketing
to increase revenues of Railways. Addressing a meeting of the
Consultative Committee Members of Parliament attached to his Ministry
here today, the Minister said that the directions followed mid-year
review of plan performance in the recently held Conference of
General Managers wherein concern was expressed over fall in revenues,
although the volume of both freight and passenger traffic has
gone up.
Giving an overview
of the performance of Railways, the Railway Minister informed
the Members that most of the trains out of 50 pairs of trains
announced in the current year’s Rail Budget have been introduced
and the remaining trains would be introduced shortly. He further
informed the Members that Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd., a Special Purpose
Vehicle(SPV) formed to execute and oversee the National
Rail Vikas Yojana (NRVY) Projects to strengthen Golden
Quadrilateral high-density routes, improve port connectivity and
four mega bridges, have started functioning. The Minister expressed
his satisfaction over the performance of non-lapsable Special
Railway Safety Fund (SRSF) which was set up in October, 2001 to
improve safety infrastructure link. He said that over 6000 route
kilometres of tracks have been renewed. As for improving
safety on Indian
Railways, the Minister outlined various steps taken including
tabling of the White Paper on Safety and the Corporate Safety
Plan besides a series of Safety-Samvad (workshops) conducted at
the apex and in the Zonal Railways, which had resulted in tackling
the problems faced by the lowest rank of safety-related staff
at the cutting edge of train operations. The measures taken so
far had resulted in perceptible improvements in safety of train
operations. Nevertheless, there was no need for complacency and
efforts were on to maintain desired level of alert-mindedness
and upkeep of rail services in ever- improving safety standards.
In this regard, the Minister informed the Members that the Rail
Coach Factory (RCF), Kapurthala, has developed a fire-proof prototype
coach which would withstand heat up to 900 degree Celsius. The
coach has since been put on trial. The Minister further said that
the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai was also in the process
of developing a fireproof coach, which together with that of the
Rail Coach Factory developed coaches would take care of accidents
caused by fire. The Minister also said that the number of accidents
during the first half of this fiscal has come down to 188, which
was a good augury. The implementation of the Corporate Safety
Plan would take care of all-round safety measures, the Minister
added. The Minister however raised the Government’s concern over
increasing accidents at the unmanned level crossings. He said
that he has addressed the Chief Ministers of States requesting
them to come forward in getting over the menace of unmanned level
crossings by converting them into road-over-bridge or rail-under-bridge
on cost-sharing basis. The Minister also raised his concern over
the growing threats to life and limbs of gatemen at manned level
crossings, who faced increasing number of attacks from unruly
road users.
Talking of the implementation
of some other measures announced in this year’s rail budget, the
Minister informed the Members that the Jammu-Udhampur rail line
would be commissioned by next month and trial run of trains introduced,
ahead of its target date of March, 2004. As for the Udhampur-Katra-Quazigund-Srinagar-Baramula
Rail link, which is a national project, the works were progressing
to the schedule. Efforts were also on to pump in more money from
the General Exchequer to improve rail infrastructure in the Northeast
region. The Minister said that the computerized Unreserved Ticketing
System introduced first on Northern Railway last year has proved
very popular with the commuters, and it was being extended to
other railways.
The meeting had a
focused discussion on all aspects of rail tourism and catering,
especially after the formation of the Indian Railway Catering
and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). An audio-visual presentation
was also given to the Members by Managing Director, IRCTC. The
Members by and large were appreciative of the performance of IRCTC
in promoting Railways’ tourism and catering. They were also appreciative
of the perceptible improvement in the quality of catering on Rajdhani,
Shatabdi, Jan Shatabdi trains and some other superfast
trains. However, they urged the Government to take steps for improving
the quality of catering services in other trains and at stations.
Responding to the
concern of Members over lack of cleanliness in trains and at stations,
the Minister announced that cleanliness would get focused attention
on Railways and the system of clean train introduced initially
at Ratlam would be extended to all major stations in due course
of time. Massive cleanliness measures were afoot to bring about
perceptible improvement in cleanliness and other passenger amenities,
the Minister added.
The Members also
discussed and demanded introduction of new trains, extension of
existing services, new lines, gauge conversion, cleanliness, and
timely completion of ongoing projects.
The following Members
took part in the meeting :
S/Shri Dr.Ramkrishna
Kusmaria, D.C. Srikantappa, Chandra Pratap Singh, Joachim Baxla,
Amar Roypradhan, Ram Prasad Singh, Ajoy Chakraborty, Dr. Prasanna
Kr. Patasani, Anil Basu, V.M. Sudheeran, Shriprakash Jaiswal,
Shanta Kumar, Basudeb Acharia, and Smt. Sheela Gautam and Smt.
Sudha Yadav, (all from the Lok Sabha) and S/Shri Y. Venkat Rao,
Moolchand Meena, Man Mohan Samal and Ms. Mabel Rebello, (all from
the Rajya Sabha).
