Central Railway, Western Railway have no financial records of megablocks

DNA‎: Mumbai: Wednesday, April 13, 2016.

A Right to Information (RTI) plea filed by a social activist has revealed that neither Central Railway nor Western Railway have any financial records of the money spent on the megablocks that both railway zones routinely carry out on Sundays.

Jogeshwari-resident Mansoor Umer Darvesh had filed the plea to find out how much money was spent on these blocks and whether there was any way the railways could quantify the work that was being done during these blocks.

"I have travelled between Jogeshwari to Churchgate almost every day for forty years now. The number of blocks were insignificant till some years ago but over the past five years I see these blocks happening with such regularity that they have almost killed the concept of Sunday travel for families in Mumbai. That is why I decided to file the RTI plea," Darvesh told dna.

He asked four questions to the railways. The first was the number of megablocks operated between January 1, 2014 and December31, 2015. The second question was the number of railway staff as well as contractual labourers employed during these megablocks. The third and fourth questions the average as well as cumulative expenditure on these megablocks were the ones that turned up blank.

"The railways have answered that between CST-Panvel 90 blocks were operated and some 3,920 staff were deployed. Between Churchgate and Virar, 98 blocks were operated and about 275 people were deployed on an average for every block. Between CST-Kalyan, the blocks were 88 and the staff used was as high as 4,359 personnel. It is a huge exercise but unfortunately the number of technical failures we see during the week show that maybe the megablocks need to be done in a better way," said Darvesh.

Railway officials, however, maintained that the megablocks are unavoidable because the tracks in Mumbai take the kind of pounding from train-running which is not comparable to any city in the world. Between the two zones almost 3,000 suburban trains and several hundred long-distance trains run on a daily basis leading to heavy wear-and-tear of assets like tracks, overhead equipment and fixed structures. While a lot of work gets done during the night, megablocks are generally operated during the day as it is safer for personnel, said railway officials.