Rlys promises wagons to ship coal

Indian Railways has assured Coal India Ltd (CIL) of adequate wagon supply in the current financial year for dispatch of required coal to country' power stations.

The Additional Member (Traffic) of Railway Board, Vivek Sahay, said the keeping in view the surging demand from its customers Railways was adding 20,000 wagons to its existing strength.

"We are ready to provide wagons as per the need of our customers and there is no shortage of wagons", he said.

Sahay was on a two-hour visit to Talcher railway station to assess the station capacity and to chart out plan of action to meet the future coal movements from the coalfield to country's power stations.

He visited all the eight railway sidings located at Jagannath, Ananat, and Bharatpur coal mines and discussed with the Director (technical) of MCL V.K.Jain and general managers of the coalfield on how to improve the system to carry on dispatch of 45 rakes per day from the coalfield in future from the current rake dispatch of 24 to 28 per day.

Stating that coal accounts for 43 percent of the total railway freight in last financial year, Sahay said, in the current year Railways planned to transport 785 million tonnes of goods, 60 MT more than the 2006-07.

Out of these 60 MT. increased traffic, coal constitutes 25 million tonne, he added. He refuted the charge that Railways was not providing required wagons for coal supply to NTPC-Kaniha here. The Railway Board member said that NTPC had its own Merry -Go -Round system to carry coal from Talcher.

"Still we provided rakes recently for coal transportation to that power plant though such short distance movement is not commercially viable for Railways", he pointed out.

Expressing his worry over the delay in loading and unloading of goods at Indian ports, Sahay said things had to be improved at ports.

He said he had visited Haldia and Paradeep ports to help authorities there to take corrective measures for to avoid delay in unloading and loading activities.

He planned to visit other ports for this purposes.

Stating that detention of wagons was a national loss he urged the customers to take lesser time for loading and unloading of their goods.

His visit to Talcher was against the backdrop of allegations made by CIL that Railway supply of wagons was short of demand.

The NTPC coal crisis was blamed on Railways.

Both the CIL and Mahanadi Coalfield alleged that the railways was responsible for short coal supply as the promised number of wagons in the last financial year were not sent to the mines, resulting in huge coal stockpiling at pitheads and short supply of coal at power stations.