In 2010-11, South Eastern Railway (SER), the country's second largest freight-loading zonal railway, failed to achieve even the scaled down freight traffic target set for the year.

During the year, SER handled a total of 123.12 million tonnes (mt), slightly lower than the scaled down target of 123.85 mt. The original target for the year was set at 127 mt over 125.91 mt handled in 2009-10.

SER sources would attribute it to overdependence on single commodity, namely, iron ore, and the dismal situation on the iron ore front. In 2010-11, iron ore throughput dropped to 68.89 mt from 75.73 mt in 2009-10, thus registering a decline of 6.84 mt.

“In the first two months of 2010-11 fiscal, iron ore loading remained totally suspended in several sidings in Orissa due to steps initiated by the State Government to curb illegal mining,” observed the sources pointing out, “the Orissa Government's regulations led to closure of 74 iron ore mines in Joda area, hitting hard our loading”.

In April and May (2010-11), SER handled a total of 18.37 mt of cargo compared with 21.37 mt in the same period of the previous year and the drop was almost entirely on iron ore account.

The shortfall in iron ore traffic could not be made up by the increased throughputs of coal at 24.58 mt (22.46 mt) and cement at 7.52 mt (6.57 mt) and other items.

This was presumably because in case of other items, the increases were marginal, such as raw materials (other than iron ore) for steel plants, 1.42 mt (1.37 mt), finished steel 12.36 mt (12.30 mt), fertilisers 0.56 mt (0.5 mt), petroleum products 2.10 mt (1.81 mt), containerised cargo 0.94 mt (0.63 mt) and others 4.36 mt ( 4.3 mt).

The volume of foodgrains declined to 0.19 mt (0.24 mt).

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW