Zonal railways must adopt sustainable ideas: Piyush Goyal

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday directed all zonal railways to come up with "sustainable" ideas for reducing railway expenses and rationalising costs, to cope up with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a review meeting, Goyal said Indian Railways must continue to optimise and reduce the costs and further improve productivity "without compromising on the quality".

The Minister asked the Railway board to study the best practices of zones at 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 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 & business development , increasing the speed or anything," said the Minister.

The Minister asked the Railway board to study the best practices of zones at 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 further stated that energy expenses on running of trains should further be rationalised.

"Record capex allocation in the historic budget is an opportunity for capacity expansion and creating the foundation of future-ready Railways," he said.

Goyal said 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 be maintained.

"Infrastructure projects under various stages of completion must be monitored on a daily basis and all time lines should be adhered to," he said.

Goyal said that Covid precautions must continue to be adhered to by Railways .

The railway ministry in a statement said that this year, Railways witnessed a "record" budgetary allocation of Rs 1.10 lakh crore in the Budget, with total capital expenditure outlay of Ra 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 crore from internal resources and over Rs one lakh crore from external budgetary resources," said the ministry.

"The thrust of annual Plan 2021-22 is on infrastructure development, throughput enhancement, development of terminal facilities, augmentation of speed of trains, signalling systems, improvement of passengers,users' amenities, safety works of road over underbridges," railway ministry said.

--IANS

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