By IANS,
Kolkata : Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday laid the foundation stones at Budge Budge for factories to manufacture air-conditioned bogies and containers.
“In last two years, there has been an increase of around one crore passengers travelling in railway daily which has resulted in demands for new coaches across the country. But we can not meet the demand as we lack infrastructure,” said Banerjee at the foundation stone laying ceremony.
“Earlier coaches were imported from abroad. Linke Holfmann Bush (LHB) modern coaches are based on new German technology and now we have started manufacturing them at Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala after transfer of technology.”
After the completion of the project, the Budge Budge unit will manufacture 1200 LHB coaches and 600 air-conditioned containers per annum, she said.
The air-conditioned containers will be used to carry perishable foodgrains across the country.
“Earlier, we have inaugurated Kisan Vikas project. It will be completed within two months, after that farmers will be able to send their harvest in markets across the country. The project was mooted after I came to know that food grains worth more than Rs.35,000 crore across the country perished every year due to shortage of cold-storage units,” she said.
Banerjee also announced that apart from conducting railway exams in all regional languages, they have also decided to conduct recruitment exams for the Railway Protection Force (RPF) in regional languages too.