The Hindu Business Line : East Coast Rly concerned over low daily loading of wagons

Other loading points
At Paradip port, coal loading was hit due to non-availability of rakes.
No loading was possible for about two months in Nayagarh-Keonjhar iron ore belt due to political agitation and other reasons.

Our Bureau

Kolkata, Oct. 17

The Bhubaneswar-based East Coast Railway (ECoR) is worried that its average daily loading of wagons at around 9,000 (in terms of four-wheelers) falls short of the targeted 11,000.

“Our present loading is higher than that in 2006-07, but not sufficient for achieving the targeted freight throughput of 96 million tonnes in the current fiscal,” says a spokesman for ECoR. In 2006-07, ECoR handled 83.92 mt.

Coal is ECoR’s major traffic item accounting for almost 50 per cent of the total volume handled. The major loading points are Talcher mines under Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd and the two ports, Paradip and Visakhapatnam. Ideally, the average daily loading at Talcher mines should be 24-25 rakes a day. But the average, so far, has not crossed 21 rakes for whatever reasons.

The coal loading at the port levels too, leaves much to be desired. Visakhapatnam port has stopped handling imported coal for Rihand and Vindyachal power plants in North India.

“For the past one year or so, we’ve been handling 10 rakes a month for each of these two plants but not any more,” the spokesman said. There was no ground stock available either.

The coal traffic at Visakhapatnam port, therefore, is limited to imported coking coal for Vizag steel plant of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (three rakes a day) and Bhilai steel plant of Steel Authority of India Ltd (3.5 rakes a day).

At Paradip port, coal loading was hit because of the non-availability of rakes. The rakes which carry iron to the port for exports are used for back-loading of the imported coal. For over a month, the port’s iron ore plant remained idle because of the technical problems. Only manual loading was possible.

ECoR, therefore, had to restrict the movement of ore rakes to the port and to that extent not enough empties became available for back-loading.

On certain occasions, ECoR had to move even empty rakes to the port to clear the stocks. Unlike, Visakhapatnam port, Paradip port now has enough stocks, equivalent of 35 rakes, but the rake availability is not enough to clear the stocks.

The iron ore loading in Bailadila mines of the National Mineral Development Corporation too, has been far from satisfactory. As a result, the average loading of iron ore rakes and their transportation along the 450-km long Kirandul-Kottavalasa line under ECoR too, has been less than normal.

Against the normal daily average of 14-15 rakes, not more than 10-11 rakes could be loaded so far in the current year. Something or the other, such as the action by the Maoists or technical problems, have hit loading.

Nayagarh-Keonjhar iron ore belt is the other loading point for ECoR at the rate of 2.5 rakes a day on an average.

Virtually no loading was possible for about two months due to restriction clamped by the district administration on road movement, political agitation and various other reasons.