Published 04:53 IST, February 6th 2020
Piyush Goyal shares video of new eco-friendly & economical coach washing plant in K'taka
Goyal stated that the plant will save water, time, money and manpower required to clean the coaches. It is Karnataka's first automatic railway washing plant.
Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday shared a video that displayed the new washing plant installed by the Railways to clean the rakes of the trains. The minister took to Twitter to share the video.
New washing plant
The new plant is Karnataka's first 'Automatic Railway coach washing plant'. Goyal went on to state that the new plant will save water, time, money and manpower required to clean the coaches. He added that the plant also leads to clean coaches for passengers in an efficient manner and eco-friendly manner.
The railways got a budgetary allocation of Rs 70,000 crore and an outlay for capital expenditure amounting to Rs 1.61 lakh crore, a paltry 3 percent more than the previous year, from Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget for 2020-21 presented on Saturday.
In the 2020-21 budget, funds of Rs 12,000 crore have been allocated for construction of new lines, Rs 2,250 crore for gauge conversion, Rs 700 crore for doubling, Rs 5,786.97 crore for rolling stock and Rs 1,650 crore for signalling and telecom. The allocation for rail passenger comfort this fiscal is Rs 2,725.63 crore. The budget also proposed freight loading at 1,265 MT, which is 42 MT (3.4 percent) incremental over RE 2019-20.
With an aim to build a seamless national cold supply chain for "perishables", Sitharaman also proposed setting up of a "Krishi Rail" through PPP arrangements. There will be refrigerated coaches in express and freight trains as well, she said. However, what will remain a major headache of the railways is the revenue expenditure, which includes an estimated salary payout of Rs 92,993.07 crore, about Rs 6,000 crore more than last year.
The Centre also allocated Rs 3,024 crore for South Western Railway Zone to implement railways projects for 2020-21.
Updated 04:53 IST, February 6th 2020