Title - Northeast Frontier Railway achieves 90% punctuality rate

Guwahati: The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has reported a punctuality rate of 90 per cent in the operation of its trains during the first four months of the current fiscal.

“The punctuality performance of mail/express trains has been 90 per cent in the current year over the period April to July. This has been achieved largely by better asset reliability as a result of improved maintenance standards,” NFR General Manager RS Virdi said during the Independence Day celebrations at the NFR headquarters in Maligaon.

He said the apportioned earnings of NFR in April-July this year has been Rs.829 crore, an increase of 2.81 per cent over the earnings of the corresponding period last year.

“In the current financial year, our originating earnings till the end of July 2013 have been Rs.911 crore, which is approximately the same as the earnings for the corresponding period last year. Our target for originating earnings for the current year is Rs.3,787 crore and I’m confident that NFR shall achieve the target,” Virdi said.

The NFR is also aiming to bring its Operating Ratio to below 150 per cent during the next few years, as against 178 per cent achieved in 2012-13. “To reduce our Operating Ratio, we have to make all-out efforts to increase our earnings and reduce working expenditure, without compromising on operational efficiency and safety,” he said.

Virdi said NFR has set a target for freight loading for 2013-14 at 10.5 million tonnes.

“We have achieved loading of 3.585 million tonnes during the first four months of 2013-14, against the proportionate target of 3.5 million tonnes. However, this is less than the corresponding figures of 3.777 million tonnes last year. We have to renew our focus on picking up additional traffic in cement, foodgrain (maize), minerals – gypsum and dolomite, and develop new streams of tea traffic, to compensate for the drop in coal traffic,” the NFR GM said.

During April-June this year, 6,167 special ticket checking drives, including 38 magisterial checks, were conducted and Rs 5.95 crore were realised as penalty from ticketless travellers and un-booked luggage.

“This year, so far, we have run 487 trips of special trains making more than 4.72 lakh seats/berths of reserved accommodation available. In addition to this, some trains were augmented to provide extra AC/non-AC accommodations and four trains have been permanently augmented with two additional coaches, each making 136 extra seats/berths available,” Virdi said.

There have been three “consequential” train accidents so far this year in the NFR zone, as against five last year.

“We strive continuously to bring this figure down to zero. As regards safety at level-crossings, we have undertaken special drives to sensitize people in general about safety aspects, especially at unmanned level-crossings.

“For safety of road users, we are gradually converting unmanned level-crossings to either subways or manned gates. In the first four months of this year, 18 unmanned level-crossings have been manned and five manned level-crossings have been closed,” Virdi said.

There is a proposal of constructing 197 limited height subways (LHS) in place of level-crossing gates to eliminate the hazards of level-crossings. Of these 197 subways, 33 are targeted to be completed during this financial year. Five have already been completed, he added.

He said selling of scrap is an important source of earning for the NFR. “We have sold scrap worth Rs.11 Crore till July 2013. For complete transparency in scrap sales, e-auction has been implemented fully in auction process by Stores Department,” Virdi said.