Goyal encourages railways officials to give suggestions for optimisation

Indian Railways must continue to optimise and reduce the costs and further improve all productivities to make this year an exceptional year in spite of COVID-19, said Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal while reviewing the working of all the railway zones.

According to an official release, the minister encouraged the officials from across the railway zones to share with the board their best practices and policy suggestions for national optimisation.

These suggestions could be about anything that can contribute to better passenger services, safety, revenue generation, freight and business development, increasing the speed or anything.

The Minister asked the Railway Board to study the best practices of zones at the earliest. Great practices or ideas that are being implemented at one place can be then replicated at other places and national optimisation can be achieved.

Goyal added that energy expenses on the running of trains should further be rationalised, adding that the record capex allocation in the historic budget is an opportunity for capacity expansion and creating the foundation of future-ready Railways.

The minister further said that freight operations of railways have helped in contributing to the economic and industrial activities of the country in a big way and therefore loading and freight momentum must continue to be maintained.

He added that infrastructure projects under various stages of completion must be monitored on a daily basis and all timelines should be adhered to.

Goyal said that COVID-19 precautions must continue to be adhered to by railways.

It may be noted that this year, Railways witnessed a "record" budgetary allocation of Rs 1.10 lakh crore in the Budget, with a total capital expenditure outlay of Rs 2.15 lakh crore for the coming financial year.

The total capital expenditure outlay includes, "highest ever" Rs 1.07 lakh crore from gross budgetary support, Rs 7,500 crores from internal resources and over Rs 1 lakh crore from external budgetary resources.

The thrust of annual plan 2021-22 is on infrastructure development, throughput enhancement, development of terminal facilities, augmentation of the speed of trains, signalling systems, improvement of passengers/users' amenities, safety works of a road over/under bridges.