KOCHI: The step-motherly attitude of Indian railways towards Kerala continues unhindered. The railways has not allotted even a single new rail coach to Kerala for the last five years. According to sources, the indifferent attitude of the authorities may create problems for the upcoming Kochi suburban service.
Unless the ensuing railway budget ensures the allocation of a sufficient number of new coaches, the state will get only outdated MEMU rakes from Tamil Nadu for running suburban services, sources said.
Southern Railway (SR) higher-ups, who denied this allegation, however, maintained that SR as a whole has not been allocated any new coaches for the last five years.
"We are facing a dire shortage of rakes. This affects our short and long distance services. We cannot directly demand coaches from Integral Coach Factory (ICF). It is the railway board which should allocate it. The allocation process is on a rotation basis and more prominence is given to North Indian states and to zones where the demand is high. In fact, what SR receives as new trains through budget allocation every year is nothing but out-dated rakes which had already conducted service for a long period through northern zones," a senior SR official said.
In the financial year 2010-11, a total of 1,503 coaches were delivered from ICF at Perambur in Chennai.
At the moment an upgradation process is on here, at an estimated cost of Rs 250 crore, for manufacturing technically improvised stainless steel shells and high speed rakes. The process will also witness an enhancement of the workshop's capacity. It would be enabled to produce 1,700 coaches per year against the current 1,500. But none of these improvement works is going to benefit Kerala or Southern Railway.
ICF officials said they had no idea on the allocation of the coaches. The factory's claim over the coaches ends once they manufacture and deliver it.
(George Adimathra, TNN | Nov 29, 2011, 01.51AM IST)
No comments:
Post a Comment