Fund crisis hampers carriage repair
Homebound passengers in West Zone of Bangladesh Railway (BR) are likely to face difficulties during the Eid ul Azha holidays early next month as special repair and re-installation works of damaged and dumped rail carriages at Saidpur Railway Workshop is hampered due to fund and material crisis.
Every year, before two Eids, the workshop officials and workers do additional work to repair and re-reinstall damaged rail carriages, to attach them with intercity and mail trains for carrying additional passengers to ease the rush of homebound passengers.
Before the Eid ul Fitr two months ago, 83 carriages were re-installed to add to a number of intercity and mail trains and arrange two special trains in Dhaka-Parbatipur and Dhaka-Khulna routes, workshop sources said.
But ahead of the coming Eid ul Azha, the authority set a target to repair and re-install only 60 damaged and old rail carriages and that too seems impossible as there is hardly any stock of vital repairing materials like MS sheet, flooring composition, brake beams, foundry materials etc in the workshop.
To tackle such situation, workshop authority on earlier occasions made local purchase of repairing materials and machinery parts from own annual budget.
But this year, they cannot do so as the fund under the annual budget of 2014-2015 fiscal year did not reach in time.
"So far we have completed re-installation of only 18 carriages and handed them over to the railway traffic department to add them with trains. Only a few other carriages might be repaired by the third week of this month," said Kudrat-e-Khuda, works manager of the workshop.
Moksedul Momin, president of Saidpur Railway Workshop Workers' Union, alleged that some corrupt high ups in the BR are creating obstacles to supply of raw materials to the workshop for repair of damaged carriages as they want import of new carriages from abroad to get 'commission' at the cost on national interest.
Divisional Superintendent of Saidpur Railway Workshop Nur Ahmed Hossain said, "I have sent urgent messages to the office of the chief controller of store of BR at Pahartoli in Chittagong with request to send repair materials and spare parts quickly. We are trying to meet the re-installation target to lessen rail passengers' sufferings during the eid."
Comments