Railways likely to save up to Rs 1,700 crore in 2003-04

Save for certain failures on the safety side, the Indian Railways has performed well in terms of savings and revenue generation during 2003-04, R K Singh, chairman of Railway Board, told the media after reviewing the performance of South Central Railway (SCR) activities here on Saturday.

He said that the Indian Railways could save up to Rs 1,700 crore in the fiscal ending March 2004 through various measures like right-sizing of staff, improvement in operational costs and shifting to NTPC for tractional requirements among others.

The railways nearly saved Rs 1 crore for each mega watt of power purchased for tractional requirement. The railways consumes 1,500 mw power for which it tied up with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) by jointly developing a 1,000 mw plant.

"Now we get power for Rs 2.60 paise per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as compared with Rs 4.20 from the state power utilities," Singh said.

"We have generated so much of surpluses that the railways is all set to wipe out the Rs 2,800 crore dues in the form of deferred dividends in a period of seven years," he said.

The railways had achieved savings by containing the spending at Rs 92 for each Rs 100 budgetary allocation, exceeding the target by about 0.6 per cent, he informed. The railways handled additionally one million tonnes of cargo with the same infrastructure, which alone helped it earn an extra Rs 50 crore, he explained.

On the passenger safety front, Singh said the railways was coming out with several new measures like introduction of fire proof coaches, anti-collision devices along the railway track, mobile train radio communications system, automatic alert system at unmanned level crossings.

He said that the prototypes for fire-proof passenger coaches, that can avoid Godhra-like incidents, had been readied at an extra cost of just Rs 4 lakh for each coach. All the new coaches would be constructed with fire-retardant materials, he added.