Eastern Railway records 15.16 per cent growth in earnings

Kolkata, Mar 27 (UNI) Recording all round performance during the current fiscal, Eastern Railway has recorded substantial growth in earnings and freight traffic and increased the number of passengers to become one of the most successful railways in the country.

Announcing this Eastern Railway General Manager Narendra Kumar Goel told newsmen here today that till February end this year the overall earnings of the railway, comprising four divisions of Howrah, Sealdah, Asansol and Malda, had recorded a healthy 15.16 per cent jump from the corresponding period of last year to Rs 2639.84 crores.

Among the total fund Rs 1577.72 crores came from freight traffic and Rs 905.14 crores from the passenger traffic.

Similarly, he said, in terms of freight traffic the (Eastern) Railway had recorded nearly three per cent increase to 43.287 million tonnes till February this year from 42.119 million tonnes achieved during the corresponding period of last year.

Regarding the hike in passenger traffic during the same period, Mr Goel said Eastern Railway which run 1467 trains everyday through 527 stations in 2414 route km, had recorded 5.30 per cent growth from 757.70 million passengers last year to 797.86 million passengers till last month during the current fiscal.

On the basis of this encouraging result the Railway Board had allocated about 18 per cent higher funds for the next financial yeas amounting to Rs 1344.27 crores to Eastern Railway to carry on its developmental work, Mr Goel informed adding that this year the total allocation was to the tune of Rs 1187.94 crores.

Of the total budgetory grant, Mr Goel said, the highest Rs 460.70 crores were allocated for planned expenditure in West Bengal, followed by Rs 91.73 crores in Jharkhand and Rs 42.11 crores in Bihar during 2007-08.

Highlighting a large number of projects which were under various stages of construction or implementation, Mr Goel said when completed mostly by next year, these would open up a new vista for passenger amenities and help make Eastern Railway as the best performing railways of the country.

Among them were introduction of a number of long distance express and mail trainsfrom Howrah andf Sealdah, increase the number of coaches of several local emus, increase the length of platforms to accomodate more caoches, improving ther overall conditions of several stations and beffing up of security both in trains and in every station.

In order to beef up security in all the four divisions of Eastern Railway, its General Manager said they had decided to instal CCTV in almost every station for close monitoring, appoint more RPF and GRP personnel and deploy in larger numbers in more trains and setting up Railways' own Bomb Disposal squad.

He said Eastern Railway had recently bought 13 puppies to train them up as sniffer dogs to trace bombs and other suspecting objects following a nine month training, he said.

UNI