Breaking


Showing posts with label CAG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CAG. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 May 2016

17:13

Railways deprived of cheapest & best form of Funding for healthy business growth

Railways deprived of cheapest & best form of Funding for healthy business growth

Where is the surplus to service the railways’ debt?

The Union railway minister, Suresh Prabhu, has drawn the attention of Parliament to the substantial rise in capital expenditure that will have taken place by the end of the current financial year. This is needed not just to renew ageing assets to ensure safety but also to raise capacity and grow. The issue is: Where is this money coming from and the way things are, can the railways service such expenditure? While the Union finance ministry has been generous with budgetary support, the really rapid rise will be in financing through extra-budgetary resources, typically bonds floated by the Indian Railway Finance Corporation. The former is relatively cheap money (less than three per cent) but uncertain, as it is dependent on the government’s fiscal situation. IRFC funding, on the other hand, is costly (8.4 per cent in 2013-14) and makes it incumbent upon the railways to achieve a healthy margin in its operations. It is here that the railways will have to seriously address the exceptionally high operating ratio (working expenses to traffic earnings) of 90 per cent for 2015-16, which indicates that very little surplus is generated from operations. So the national carrier is deprived of what is the cheapest and best form of funding for healthy business growth — internal resources. The medium term trends revealed in the recently tabled CAG’s report on the railways for 2014-15 are illuminating. Virtually the entire surplus (97 per cent) generated by freight operations goes to meet the deficit in passenger services. Every class of passenger travel, except three-tier AC, loses money. The report expectedly recommends that passenger fares should be raised. However, the total number of passengers carried in the last three years has not just plateaued but fallen, even as passenger revenue has gone up. If fares are raised further, more passengers are likely to keep walking away until revenue starts getting affected. The story is the same in terms of the scope for raising freight rates, with the railways continuing to lose market share. If the scope for improving margins by raising tariffs is severely limited, there is only one way to go – reduce costs by improving efficiencies. The railways ability to carry out internal reforms (they improve efficiencies) is thus vital for its healthy survival and growth. The CAG’s report narrates the fate of one operation, recasting the railways financial statements along commercial lines. This, among other things, will indicate if the bottom line, net profit or revenue, is realistic after providing enough for depreciation. Started a decade ago with the assistance from the Asian Development Bank and a timeline of 30 months, the process is yet to be completed. What is worse, the CAG’s department could not even get a reply from the railways to its query last year asking for the current status of the exercise. There is another area that cries for reform. Today, when every business is frantically going digital, it is imperative for the railways to publish a white paper detailing its digital road map. The level of computerisation already achieved should enable the railways to go in for vastly greater data analysis and differentiated pricing based on seasonality and geographical pattern of demand. This will enable more sophisticated incentive pricing. There also cannot be any further delay in reorganising the railway board so as to have members dedicated to customer segments and an independent pricing authority which will take the politics out of fixing fares and freight rates.

Source:RailNews


0
By at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Thursday, 24 December 2015

07:02

Indian Railways Crew Management System lacks adequate Security Measures: CAG

Indian Railways Crew Management System lacks adequate Security Measures: CAG

New Delhi: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has observed that the Crew Management System (CMS), a critical IT application of the Indian Railways lacks sufficient security measures to prevent unauthorised access to the system.

CAG in its latest report placed before Parliament found that the system lacked adequate control to ensure completeness, accuracy and validity of data pertaining to various aspects of CMS operations. “The CMS lacked adequate security measures to prevent unauthorised access to the system and uninterrupted operations,” it noted.

The crew management system (CMS) is a critical IT application of the Indian Railways which manages crew assignment to various trains and directly impacts the safety of train operations. The extent of achievement of the objectives of CMS was evaluated by CAG and the aspects relating to IT application controls, IT security, continuity of the organisation’s business, contracting issues, project management/monitoring and change management were also reviewed.

The national auditor noted there was no business continuity plan (BCP) to continue operations round the clock at lobby level. “There was no arrangement for remote backup of data and business continuity plan/disaster recovery plan at remote site was yet to be implemented. No procedure was devised for effecting changes in the software,” CAG observed.

The application aims at managing over one lakh drivers and guards to ensure round the clock safe operations of railways. The objective of this application was to improve the efficiency of train operations, effectively monitor crew and to comply with the safety requirements relating to crew management and to improve the financial management and monitoring.

With a crew of nearly one lakh drivers and guards labouring round the clock, 365 days a year ensuring the nation is not caught on the hop, Indian Railways is among the largest public transport employers in the world. A chink in its operations would mean only one thing: life comes to a standstill in the country.  Among the many mission critical applications in the Indian Railways is the Crew Management System (CMS), a vital component in the smooth functioning of the human resource management arm of the mammoth organisation.  Developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the software and communications arm of the Indian Railways, CMS automates day-to-day business functioning by monitoring crew movement real-time, duty allocation, payment calculation and crew training in an efficient and transparent manner. This has not only improved the safety of train operations, but also reduced the operational costs by replacing the age-old manual system.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems oversees the computer and IT systems of Indian Railways — one of the largest government-managed rail carriers in the world. The center offers consulting and IT support services to the rail organization.
Challenge:  The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) is the organization dedicated to managing the IT systems of India Railways — one of the world’s largest rail carriers. India Railways was struggling with the inefficiency of its manual employee scheduling systems. Far too often, train engineers and guards waited for hours to receive their daily assignments and, once assigned, were forced to work extra hours because adequate relief staff had not been properly scheduled.

Solution: CRIS, leveraging IBM software, deployed a crew management system that automatically evaluates employee skill sets against established train schedules to determine optimal staff assignments. And, because the system tracks the locations of working employees in real time, managers can easily shuffle assignments to accommodate any issues (such as a tardy or absent employee). Employees, in turn, are dispatched their orders via text messages as well as in-terminal kiosks.  CRIS developed this crew management system internally, leveraging IBM Rational ®, IBM WebSphere ®, IBM Tivoli ®, IBM DB2 ®, IBM System x ® and IBM System p ® technology.

Classification of Loco Pilots and Guards on Indian Railways

How vigorous is the job profile can be noted from this very fact that the Railway recruits persons as ‘Assistant Loco Pilot’ . They work on freight trains for as long as 10–12 years. During this tenure they are supposed to work with experienced Train Drivers and perform only assisting work during the run of a locomotive i.e. a train. An Assistant Driver thus learns the tactics and dos and don’ts required for train operation. Thereafter they are promoted as ‘Loco Pilot Shunter’, after proper courses and practical trainings, wherein they are supposed to drive locomotives in sheds/yards at not more than 15 km/h speeds. After experiencing for not less than two years, they are promoted as ‘Loco Pilot/Goods’, who are always monitored by their respective ‘Loco Inspectors’.

A train has typical an Assistant Loco Pilot and a Loco Pilot on the Locomotive. The Assistants are normally common but Loco Pilots fall in various categories like Goods Drivers (or Loco Pilots used for running goods trains), Passenger Driver (Driver used to run slow moving Passenger carrying Trains), Mail Express Driver (Driver used to run high speed Passenger carrying Trains) and Rajdhani Drivers (Used for very high speed passenger carrying trains). There is yet another category of crew called ‘Shunters’ who operate only in yards, for moving trains within a particular station yard. Normally Shunters work alone without an Assistant.

The train at the rear end has Guards as its crew. They are categorised as goods guards, passenger guards and mail express guards based on the type of train on which they are working.

Earlier working scenario

The job of a Loco Pilot consists of irregular rest and working hours, eating disorders and sleep disorders. That is why the Railway spends a lot on their trainings and resting time. They are booked from a crew changing point, informed well in advance, after ensuring that they have taken sufficient rest and completed all required trainings and requirements, those are mandatory for train operation. At the end of the journey, they are sent to well maintained rest rooms, given meals (home cooked) and rebooked back to their headquarters after giving minimum stipulated rest.

Latest Developments

Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an IT development unit for Indian Railways, has developed a software named ‘Crew Management System’, wherein bookings of this sensitive category of people, which was done manually till now and monitored at various levels by Inspectors and Officers, is arranged through software. Crew Management System(CMS) is a unique system in which accuracy and monitoring is automatically maintained. The software system was rolled out in December 2007 and already installed at about 2200 data entry nodes at over 290 crew booking points. These are spread over entire Indian Railways.  CMS at present has a database covering 89,000 crew members and over 30000 crew members are being booked daily through the system. The work has been completed and provided with Thin Clients connected to a server cluster at CRIS, wherein all the functions like crew bookings, call served to crews, their signing on duties are done through computers after ensuring their rest,training and medical particulars. The job which was done manually till a few years back is now monitored automatically. Not only it has a single data base of all the running staff of Indian Railways, but also have an all around reports(more than 500 reports of these crews are visible to the monitoring authorities of the Railways). All the officers sitting in their offices can monitor performance reports of the train operating staff. This enhances the performance planning by the officers. The Ministry of Railways is also doing a great job by motivating such projects and giving sufficient funds for same. A Project which was initially started in Nov 2006 with a team of 5-6 software persons is now managed by a GM rank officer with a dedicated team of inhouse software developers and domain experts, who are basically attached to driving jobs since the last 15–20 years. The system caters for All gauges BG, MG, NG now.

Brief technical particulars
The CMS software is Industry standard software using middle ware and products, hardware components and LAN/WAN network components. The business transactions are transacted so as to provide timely information with increased productivity and reduced paper work to a great extent at the lobby locations. The CMS system is being implemented in the Railways Lobbies at 306 lobby (Location where Railways crew are booked) locations with touch screen along with biometric devices for Sign-On/Off of crew from their duties. The CMS software uses FOIS and Railways network with adequate provision for security in the system so that it is not be vulnerable to hacking from outside. It also has on-line application processing (distributed) & data inter-viewing at the Divisional and Zonal offices.

The different applications of CMS require various levels of organization hierarchy to access it via a web browser. This application extends to various stakeholders and provides a single window interface to the Train Crew.

The CMS software is a centralized architecture using n-tier Java EE architecture with Web Services/Struts framework which works in online mode. All the stakeholders access the applications after user authentication and authorization. The solution has high scalability, flexibility, reliability and is complaint to industry Open Standard specifications. The software solution is :-

Compliant to n-tier Java EE architecture.
Seamless integration of enterprise systems with the existing business applications.
Single sign-on feature.
Open-standards platform supports web service.
Extending existing applications for multiple devices.
Utilizing full advantage of device features for management and interactions from a central location i.e. CRIS.
User friendliness.
End to end linux based System.
Browser access via kiosks and thin clients access.
Comprehensive data validations during capturing.
Industry standards security features.
Interface with SMS gateway for information dissemination and verification.
Online pre-formatted and flexible period report generation.
Highly flexible and high available solution with 24 x 7 uptime.
Content sensitive help
The software is in house software assisted by IBM & HCL in the designs and performance optimisation of the software. These steps are primarily for ensuring a robust and scalable architecture that conforms to open standards and promotes inter-operability duly taking care of the security concerns. The design and implementation of the CMS is expected to lead to the evolution of a truly robust architecture based on the principle of inter-operability and open standards.

SMS feature
The Crew Management System software has a unique feature of booking the crew through SMS. It is sent to the crew through the central database to serve it a call.If the crew acknowledges the call by sending back an acknowledgment through SMS, the crew is booked. This is done for those crews who reside farther than 7–8 km from the crew booking location, else a call boy is sent for the same.Thus the software facilitates faster crew booking.

System generated alerts are also sent to the required personnel in the following manner:-

Morning position of crew strength at various crew booking locations.
Alerts for crew strength at particular crew booking point going below a critical limit.
Automated alerts for their nominated Inspector, for crew becoming due for monitoring.
The crew can have his personnel information like turn of crew booking, Status, PME, Mileage and other Training due dates on his Mobile.
Congratulations on birthdays to crew members of whom date of birth are with the database.
0
By at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

09:53

CAG slams Railways’ on Safety measures; says Delays in Repairs put Lives at Risk

CAG slams Railways’ on Safety measures; says Delays in Repairs put Lives at Risk

New Delhi: The federal auditor slammed railways for the delay in sanctioning and completing repair work in old bridges, saying it “posed a threat to human lives.”

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) noted that in 31 out of 102 bridgeworks test checked, railways took on an average 43 months to sanction the bridgeworks after its identification for rehabilitation. There are over 1.36 lakh railway bridges which are an essential part of the Indian Railways network. The existence of a large number of very old bridges identified as due for rehabilitation/ reconstruction is a concern for safe train operations.

The auditor found that there was shortfall in achievement of target in nine zonal railways. There was also under-utilisation of funds to the extent of Rs 60.95 crore on an average per year. The CAG noted that the delay has resulted in operation of train services with speed restrictions. Instances of continued speed restriction were noticed on 87 bridges over 13 zonal railways resulting in extra expenditure of Rs 103.40 crore.

The auditor noted that 96 out of 147 bridges, considered to be prone to brittleness and to be phased-out by end of 2013, are still in existence over five zonal railways. Besides it noticed shortfall in the scheduled inspection of bridges by various levels of inspection authority to the extent of 32.19% which may be a “serious threat” to safety of passengers as the existence of defects of the bridges, if any, may remain unnoticed.

The national auditor also pulled up railways for receiving fake currency notes of the face value of Rs 92.33 lakh during the last five years while reprimanding the transporter for not adhering to the prescribed rules for dealing with such cases.

“The total debits of Rs 92.33 lakh were raised as on July 2014 by banks/cash offices on the selected stations for remitting fake Indian currency notes (FICNs). Though major portion (78.60 per cent) of the debits was made good by the concerned booking staff, the procedure adopted by the railway authorities for dealing with FICNs was not as per the procedures laid down in Cash and Pay Manual of the Railways,” the CAG said.

The CAG, which examined the records for the period from 2010-11 to 2014-15 up to July 2014, cautioned that this led to possibility of re-circulation of fake currency in the open market.

In another report, the CAG found that short circuit, poor maintenance and lack of awareness are major reasons of fire in trains. It also noted that the automatic smoke/fire detection devices in running trains are not properly functional.

The cases of fire accidents in the passenger coaches of Indian Railways jumped 160 per cent between 2012 and 2014 even as they were expected to come down by 80 per cent, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found.The auditor, in its latest report on Indian Railways tabled in Parliament today, has said short circuit, poor maintenance and lack of awareness are among the major reasons of fire in trains while the automatic smoke and fire detection devices in the running trains are not successfully implemented.

A joint survey conducted by CAG and railway officials found fire prone activities like cigarette smoking, cooking by vendors at stations, carrying of inflammable articles by unauthorised persons, accumulation of empty cardboard boxes and other waste materials were unchecked aggravating the risk of fire.

“Though recommendations are made by high level safety review committee and 12th Five Year Plan for introduction of fire alarm system in coaches for early detection of fire, it has not been successfully implemented,” the report said.

The audit also found a disproportionate revenue sharing formula adopted by the Western Railway and Kutch Railway Company (KRCL) led to undue benefit to the tune of Rs 300 crore to KRCL for the period between July 2006 to March 2014.

The auditor also found Indian Railways could not tap into revenue potential due to delays in construction of private sidings near railways stations. The CAG found in 26 of the 293 private railways sidings, the shortfall in traffic with respect to projects was more than 50 per cent. “No effort was made by railways to review the volume of traffic generated from sidings,” it said.

The CAG also pointed out several issue in the functioning of the Kapurthala Railway Coach factory (RCF). It has delivered only 470 LHB coaches till date leading to the failure of the project aimed at complete switchover to stainless steel coaches by Indian Railways. Also, material worth Rs 31 crore was idling in RCF as the railway board changed the production programme too often.

The report observed that Corporate Safety Plan (CSP) envisaged bringing down the number of accidents by 80% from 2001-02 to 2013 but number of accidents went up by 160% during the period. The loss of human lives in fire accidents in passenger coaches steeply increased from three in 2001-02 to nine in 2011-12, to 32 in 2012-13 and 35 in 2013-14.
0
By at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

07:43

Rail Pollution: NGT directs IR’s Environment Directorate to file a reply on direct discharge through toilets on Railway lines

Rail Pollution: NGT directs IR’s Environment Directorate to file a reply on direct discharge through toilets on Railway lines

Pune: The National Green Tribunal (West Zone) has directed the environment directorate of the railway ministry to file a reply on the issue of direct discharge through toilets on the Indian Railways system which leads to massive pollution, an activist said on Tuesday.

“The NGT has taken serious cognizance of our environment interest litigation (EIL) which points out how nearly 4,000 tonnes of human waste is dumped daily through the ‘open discharge system’ used on Indian Railways,” said lawyer Asim Sarode.

The NGT recently asked the railway ministry to file its reply and remain present before the tribunal on Octpber 1, in the EIL filed through NGO Sahyog Trust’s socio-legal analyst Rama Sarode and her team comprising Mukta Sathe, Tushar Wayal, Sanjay Jadhav and Shreyas Atre.

The petition demanded that the existing toilet systems must be replaced with eco-friendly alternatives like bio-toilets.

The EIL said pollution was not limited only to railway tracks, but surroundings like water bodies, rivers, atmosphere when faecal matter discharged causes severe pollution and health hazards.

“In fact, the toilets in the Indian Railway systems have become the biggest mobile source of environmental pollution with this daily hazard dumped all over the country where thousands of trains ply,” Sarode said.

Citing a CAG report, Sarode said that despite two decades of conducting trials with different models of ‘green toilets’, the Indian Railways have failed to finalise the suitable technology and implement it, though the deadline was 2007.

Even the installation of bio-toilets, which converts excreta into neutral water using a form of bacteria has been dissatisfactory with only 10 percent work completed so far, he added.

Besides stopping the present form of direct discharge, the EIL urged the railway ministry to appoint only those coach manufacturers who can incorporate eco-friendly toilets into the coach design, and cover all water bodies on which railway tracks pass to prevent the discharge of human waste into the fresh water below.
0
By at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

07:46

Indian Railways moves Supreme Court on dual freight policy issue

Indian Railways moves Supreme Court on dual freight policy issue

The cash-strapped Indian Railways has moved the Supreme Court in a case against its dual pricing mechanism that can open up the possibility of the transporter collecting thousands of crores additionally from iron ore exporters, who allegedly misused the facility to evade full freight charges.

The cash-strapped Indian Railways has moved the Supreme Court in a case against its dual pricing mechanism that can open up the possibility of the transporter collecting thousands of crores additionally from iron ore exporters, who allegedly misused the facility to evade full freight charges.

The railways has suffered a loss of over R29,000 crore in five years on freight earnings because of the faulty manner in which it charged for the carriage of iron ore, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said in its report tabled in Parliament last month. The amount, if recovered, can significantly boost the capex plans of the cash-strapped entity, which has projected a 52% jump in Plan spending for the current fiscal.
Ever since the evasion was detected in 2011, the case has been under the scanner of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the CAG, CBI and other agencies. Seeking the transfer of around two dozen petitions pending before different high courts in the country against its 2008 dual pricing mechanism for iron ore, the government has challenged the Calcutta High Court’s order in December last year that upheld the railways’ policy, but restrained it from blacklisting the companies and imposing penalty on them for evading the full freight charges by falsely claiming that the iron ore they moved through railways was meant for domestic consumption.

 Source : The Financial Express.

0
By at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, 8 May 2015

23:19

Railways suffered huge loss over iron ore booking: CAG

Railways suffered huge loss over iron ore booking: CAG 

NEW DELHI: Railways has suffered a huge loss of over Rs 29,000 crore in freight earning due to the non-compliance of rules in iron ore booking, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The CAG in its latest report tabled in Parliament today found that iron ore carried at domestic rate but not consumed for domestic purposes and diverted for third party trading or export resulted in loss to the exchequer.

Audit has highlighted the deficiencies in compliance with laid down rules and procedures in booking and delivery of iron ore at domestic rate by concerned railway officials that resulted in a financial loss of expected goods earnings to the extent of Rs 29,236.77 crore during May 2008 and September 2013. 

Railways failed to do the needful and allowed the manufacturers to transport iron ore at concessional rates, the report said.

Iron ore is an important commodity transported by railways for domestic consumption and export. 

The national auditor reviewed the records connected with 83 major loading points over seven zonal railways and 180 major unloading points over 15 zonal railways during the period between May 22, 2008 to September 30, 2013 to check compliance with laid down rules and procedures for booking and delivery of iron ore at domestic rate by Railways and assess the quantum of freight evasion and leviable penalty due to non-compliance, if any besides detection of cases involving any diversion/removal of i .. 

Railways had introduced the dual freight policy (DFP) from May 22, 2008 as per which transportation of iron ore was categorised in two parts - domestic consumption and other than domestic consumption. "There were inherited deficiencies in the framework of the DFP for iron ore," the report said.

The DFP in effect led to freight difference between the domestic and export category, which was on an average more than three times.

Audit observed that Railways did not lay down adequate internal controls check and balances for effective implementation of DFP. 

Source : Economic Times

0
By at No comments:
Labels: , ,