Secunderabad: Despite pandemic, SCR puts in impressive show

Secunderabad: Gajanan Mallya, General Manager, South Central Railway, is all praise for the Railway personnel for their rule during the current pandemic and notes that they are functioning relentlessly to ensure supply chain intact and balance the supply of essential commodities across the country.

He was expressing his appreciation during a virtual press held on Wednesday to highlight the achievements of the SCR zone during the current financial year. B B Singh, Additional General Manager, SCR, was present along with principal heads of various departments and divisional railway managers of Secunderabad and Hyderabad.

Mallya spoke of how various measures taken by the SCR enhanced freight traffic, such as freight incentive schemes, concessions for freight customers for enhancing the loading. Explaining the measures taken for the treatment for Covid-affected patients at Central Hospital, Lallaguda, Secunderabad, Railway Hospitals at Guntakal & Vijayawada as per the ICMR guideline protocols. Massive COVID test camps have been organised at zonal and divisional headquarters in coordination with respective State governments. He informed that the SCR stood first amongst Indian Railways in track maintenance works. It commissioned a total of 89 km of new lines, 41 km of doubling and 44 km of gauge conversion works. In Telangana region, it commissioned 43 km of new lines and 30 km of doubling and in Andhra Pradesh region, 46 km of new lines and 11 km of doubling are made operational. In Maharashtra, 44 km gauge conversion has been commissioned.

The SCR zone achieved third highest parcel loading across Indian Railways. The zone has transported 2.8 crore litres of milk through 587 milk tankers. It also operated 158 parcel special trains and transported around 39,000 tonnes of various commodities.

It ran South India's first Kisan Rail service between Anantapur and New Delhi on

September 9 to provide transport facility for the agricultural produce of farmers. Average speed of the freight trains was improved from 24 kmph to 51 kmph. During the pandemic period, the loading of food grains was doubled from 2 MTs to 4.3 MTs.

After a brief slowdown in the initial months of the current financial year, the loading saw an upswing in September. Barring coal, loading in all other commodities including cement, food grains, fertilizers, POL, granite etc., recorded much higher output in September as compared to September last year.