2 months ago
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The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has observed that the Carriage Repair Workshop successful Mancheswar, Bhubaneswar, utilized second-hand items to regenerate indispensable parts of railway coaches, which not lone violated periodic overhauling norms but besides endangered rider safety.
The workshop’s wrongdoings came to airy erstwhile respective coaches, repaired there, failed wrong 100 days of periodic overhauling.
Opinion | Indian Railways and information challenges
The PAC observed respective anomalies successful the show of the workshop, its procurement process of works and machinery, arsenic good arsenic inaccuracies successful the attraction of manager holding data.
The Carriage Repair Workshop, Mancheswar (CRW/MCS), which comes nether the East Coast Railway (ECoR) zone, was established successful November 1981 to repair railway coaches. Its archetypal overhauling capableness was 45 coaches per month, which was accrued to 150 coaches by 2016.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had examined the functioning of the store for the twelvemonth ended March 2023 successful its study tabled successful Parliament successful 2025 and the PAC selected the CAG study for elaborate examination.
While examining the functioning of the workshop, the PAC noted that the projections for periodic overhauling (POH) of coaches were made higher than the existent outturn.
For instance, during the reappraisal play of 2020 to 2023, the committee recovered that its archetypal projections were to overhaul 4,370 coaches and contempt the Railway Board reducing the people to 3,796 coaches, its outturn was 3,402 coaches.
“The Committee are of the presumption that since projections find the required spares, manpower and different resources, realistic projections of POH arisings are indispensable for absorption of resources of immoderate carriage repair workshop,” the study said.
Examining the nonaccomplishment of coaches wrong 100 days of POH, the committee said that of the 3,402 coaches overhauled during 2020-23, 131 failed wrong 100 days of POH and of these, 14 instances were reported to the Mancheswar store by assorted obstruction depots.
“...the remaining 117 instances were not reported by the depots, arsenic a effect of which CRW/MCS could not analyse each instances of nonaccomplishment of coaches wrong 100 days of POH,” the committee said.
The committee expressed interest to enactment that successful galore coaches which failed wrong 100 days of POH, 19 must-change mechanical items were replaced by second-hand serviceable items.
This not lone violated “the prescribed process of must-change items during POH… but besides compromised rider safety”.
“The Committee observe that contempt inspection astatine aggregate stages, sometimes nonaccomplishment occurs owed to worldly defects, mediocre workmanship, oregon improper usage,” the study said, adding that aft deployment of unit to show POH, determination were improvements successful 100-day nonaccomplishment cases.
“The occurrence of 100-day nonaccomplishment cases is simply a wide indicator of mediocre show of the workshop, straight reflecting the substandard quality,” the study said.
It added, “The Committee, therefore, recommends that the errant signifier of replacement of must-change mechanical items by second-hand serviceable items by the bogie repair store during the POH should beryllium eliminated forthwith.”
It besides recommended an autarkic third-party appraisal “to place the large reasons for failures and utilise the findings for taking corrective actions”.
“The Committee further recommends that cases of under-reporting of nonaccomplishment cases by the Depots to the Workshop should beryllium taken due cognisance of, arsenic it leads to information mismatches and non-receipt/outturn of coaches and should, therefore, beryllium done distant with and monitoring of sick marking of POH coaches should beryllium strengthened,” the study said.
The committee besides noted non-cognisance of respective issues flagged by the CAG study starring to the idling of works and machinery coupled with a discarded of nationalist money.
“Since works and machinery are the foundational assets of immoderate carriage workshop, their idleness indispensable beryllium avoided to mitigate the wastage of nationalist funds,” the committee said.
It recommended a due mechanics “to guarantee procurement of machinery of desired specifications lone from validated vendors and besides to present and instrumentality measures for the intent of stronger fiscal deterrence arsenic regards presumption and conditions of the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC).”
