SCR gets a fair deal

Andhra Pradesh got a fair deal in the Railway Budget announced on Wednesday. The state will have a wagon manufacturing factory at Secunderabad to be set up in public private partnership. The specifics of the project would be worked shortly, according to South Central Railway (SCR) general manager MS Jayanth.

Addressing a press conference here today, he said SCR had also been sanctioned a sports academy at Secunderabad. Even as the Centre proposed to take up 1,000 km new lines, the division has been allotted a fifth of that, he said.

Among others, AP has been sanctioned eight Adarsh stations and an equal number of multi-functional complexes. It also figured in north-south, east-south and south-south dedicated freight corridors. The preliminary engineering-cum-traffic survey for these will be taken up this year, the general manager said.

The Railways would welcome participation of the private sector for providing rail connectivity to Vadarevu and Nizampatnam ports in the state.

“This is a development Budget and all earlier projects would be taken up,” he said, adding allocation for SCR for new lines normally was around Rs 150 crore but that has been increased five times to Rs 750 crore this year.

Also, 21 new trains have been sanctioned as compared with two last year and three the previous year. Passenger amenities too would improve as the sanction this year was higher at Rs 227 crore as compared with Rs 118 crore.

The Union government has set a freight loading target of 944 million tonne for 2010-11, of which SCR would contribute about 100 million tonne.

He said there were about 4,000 vacancies in the SCR division and they would be filled according to the policy of the Railway Recruitment Board. The question papers would also be set in Telugu apart from Hindi, Urdu and English.