NEW DELHI: To ensure accountability of General Managers and bring in professionalism, Indian Railways has decided to provide zone wise targets to all 17 railway zones and for the first time will enter into written agreements with GMs to ensure these are achieved. The completion of these targets will also have weightage in their annual performance reports.
The moves comes after Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu early this year decided to delegate powers of tendering to GMs and now tenders upto Rs 500 crore are handled at zonal level.
Prabhu, who is holding a meeting of all GMs on June 3, wants to give ambitious targets to all zones and wants the GMs to achieve it.
The ministry feels that now that GMs have the power of tendering, there should be some accountability that they meet the targets. Ministry will provide written targets related to track laying, average speed and safety among others to GMs, which will be reviewed at regular intervals.
On the lines of the global corporate objectives, Railways has prepared a list of 18 performance indicators under five subheads -- operational and financial performance, capacity enhancement, capacity utilisation, asset reliability and manpower.
All zones will be asked to furnish details of increase in overall revenues compared to last year, originating passenger traffic and freight and non fare revenue among others. They are to provide details related to doubling, electrification, new lines and private sidings under capacity enhancement.
“The idea of entering into a written agreement is to have some sanctity and professionalism and GMs are expected to enter into similar agreements with DRMs under them,” said a railway ministry official.
Railways has decided to include this also in their annual performance reports and they are expected to meet the targets. PSE (Public Sector Enterprises) uses similar system for PSUs and railways is adopting similar model.
Railway in January this year allowed decentralisation of tendering whereby Prabhu gave away all his powers to decide on tenders and allowed Railway Board and GMs to take a call.
Tenders valuing up to Rs 500 crore are now accepted at the level of Additional Members of Railway Board. For tenders with values more than Rs 500 crore, Additional Members form the Tender Committee for evaluation, while the Board Member concerned will be the tender accepting authority.
The decentralisation was recommended by a committee constituted under former Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan to bring in transparency n Railways.