Indian Railways to expedite 500 pending projects



With several tracks and passenger amenities related work running behind schedule, Railways has identified nearly 500 projects and appointed nodal officers for each one tasked with targets to ensure timely completion.

On the directions of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, a list of nodal officers for railway projects has been prepared both from railways and executing agency side. The works range in areas of ticketing, accounting reforms, crew management, real-time train information system, enhanced e-ticketing system for Indian Railways, disaster management, pan India Railway Protection Force helpline and implementation of Track Management System (TMS) among others.

“Some of the listed projects have been pending for years with no decision on their implementation.  Now nodal officers have been assigned for each of the projects along with an official from executing agency so that there is no further delay and work can be expedited,” said a senior railway ministry official.

There has also been an emphasis on the need for improving transportation output both in freight and passenger segment by three times during the next five year by 2022. This means that all production units manufacturing wagons, loco and other track related equipment need to ramp up production massively.

“It is needless to say that output of our production units has to increase substantially during this period to match the growth expectation. There is, therefore, an urgent need for evaluating the performance of manufacturing facilities to assess their capability to ramp up production by almost 3 times the present level with the existing workforce,” the official said.

According to the railway, any successful production ramp-up programme should inter-alia facilitate decisions that lead to best use of time, financial and human resources.

“Production Units shall have to come out with a workable plan by making suitable changes to existing processes, improving productivity, induction of new technology and machinery and plants. All have been asked to submit a roadmap without absolute clarity of resources required with cost and timeline,” the official added.

Source: THE NEW INDIA EXPRESS