The Bangladesh Railway is burdened with a large number of locomotives, carriages, wagons and relief cranes running long past their economic lives.
With this old and rickety rolling stock the railway is failing to provide quality services to the passengers amid different ongoing development projects costing thousands crores of taka.
Much of the rolling stock often remains under maintenance instead of being available for services, show railway statistics.聽
Railways minister Zillul Hakim told 抖阴精品 on Sunday that efforts were underway to overhaul the railway, including its rolling stock, to improve its services.
He said that after discussion with prime minister Sheikh Hasina he had started talking with different sources for taking initiatives.
鈥榃e take attempts to modernise the railway and make the railways ministry active,鈥� he added.聽
Railway officials said that the standard economic lives of locomotives, passenger carriages, freight wagons and relief cranes are 20 years, 35 years, 40 years and 20 years respectively.
Currently, the state-owned agency has a total of 317 locomotives of which 180 are meter gauge locomotives and 137 are broad gauge ones.
Meter gauge locomotives are narrower than the broad gauge ones, and the Bangladesh Railway has a vision to convert all meter gauge rail tracks to broad gauge in future.
Out of the total locomotives, 125 or 39 per cent are running with their economic lives on with the rest running beyond their economic lives.
A total of 103 locomotives, which is 32 per cent of the total, are running for more than 40 years.
Out of total 2,016 passenger carriages, 1,395 are meter gauge and 621 are broad gauge ones.
Among these carriages, 1,083 or 54 per cent are running with their economic life still on, while 933 or 46 per cent are running with their economic lives already expired.
The railway now has a total of 3,095 freight wagons of which 2,142 are meter gauge and 953 are broad gauge ones.
A total of 887 or 28 per cent wagons are running with their economic life still on, while 2,208 or 72 per cent are running beyond their economic lives.
Out of total 16 relief cranes, 10 are meter gauge and six are broad gauge ones.
Among these, six or 38 per cent are running with their economic life not yet expired, while 10 or 63 per cent are running beyond their economic lives.
As per the daily operational performance report of the railway, on May 18, only 77.55 per cent of the locomotives were available for the services.
A railway insider said that the meaning of unavailable rolling stock is it was sent for maintenance.
Regarding carriages, total 1,598 were available for services on May 18, the number was 1,659 a month ago on April 18.聽
Currently under the railway, 28 projects are ongoing for the development of different services like construction of tracks, procurement of rolling stock, rehabilitation of tracks, level crossings and conversion of meter gauge lines to dual gauges, as per the railway鈥檚 project progress report of September 2023.
Estimated cost of all these project is Tk 1,40,109.78 crore. Of the amount, Tk 90,768.42 crore is drawn from project assistance sources, and the rest Tk 49,341.35 crore from the government fund.
