The Hindu Business Line : East Coast Rly set to resume rake loading of iron ore

Kolkata, Sept. 12 The rake loading of iron ore in Orissa’s iron ore belt extending from Nayagarh to Jakhapura area is to resume shortly. This follows the resumption of road bridging, on a limited scale though, following improvement in road traffic from the mines to the nearest railheads.

Indents for loading

“We’ve started receiving indents for loading from the iron ore trade,” a spokesman for East Coast Railway (ECoR), which is serving the area, told Business Line over phone from Bhubaneswar.

However, as it was pointed out, a limited number of indents had been received for loading in Nayagarh only. No indents had yet been received for loading in the Sukinda area.

It might be recalled that the rake loading of iron ore in that area came to a halt as the district administration clamped restriction on road movement of iron ore laden trucks from the mines to the railheads.

As a result, a large number of indents for the railways too were cancelled.

The spokesman, however, felt that full-fledged rake loading would take time to resume.

“The discussion with the iron ore trade suggests that full-fledged loading is possible only after festival season,” he said indicating that the shortfall in loading so far had to be made up by aggressive operation between November and March, if the targeted freight traffic of 96 million tonnes (mt) for 2007-08 is to be achieved.

In the Nayagarh-Jakhapura area alone, the iron ore loading must be stepped up to eight to 10 rakes day from the normal four to five rakes a day.

Coal

The spokesman preferred to keep his finger crossed in regard to the loading of coal, the single largest item in ECoR’s traffic basket.

“We load domestic coal in the mines of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and imported coal at the two ports of Paradip and Visakhapatnam,” he said pointing out while the port loading had been satisfactory, the loading at MCL mines left much to be desired.

“We want to load at least 25 rakes a day at MCL mines but can hardly load more than 20,” he said pointing out that the issue was being taken up with the new Chairman and Managing Director of MCL.

Meanwhile, till August this year, ECoR handled a total of 37.13 mt of traffic as compared to 33.25 mt in the same period last year, thus posting around 11.66 per cent growth.

In August alone, the growth was 19.56 per cent at 7.58 mt, 6.34 mt in the same month last year.