RAIPUR: When two organs of the government fight it out over “inefficiency and penal charges,” the result could be the inconvenience caused to the people. The Indian Railways has locked horns with the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), a flagship company of the central public sector undertaking Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), over failure to clear the goods unloaded from the rakes within a deadline.
Bhilai is around 30 km from the state capital Raipur. The Railways has cited an example: one coal rake in BSP loaded from Visakhapatnam took more than 24 hours to unload while another from the same port is still under unloading even after 38 hours.
“Such poor unloading performance not just badly affects the availability of rakes for the BSP but also for other railway customers. The Railways has imposed penal demurrage on BSP to incentivize faster unloading”, said the public relation officer of the South East Central Railway, which is among the most profit-making zones in the country.
The BSP has admitted that the railway rakes are being held up or delayed. “Blame the rains. The freight wagons are mostly open, so the coal or raw materials become sticky. It takes time for us to transport it via conveyor belts. Once the rain stops, we hope the situation will improve for us too,” Jacob Kurien, BSP’s public relation officer, told this paper.
The railways has also held BSP accountable for excess detention of the rakes. “Owing to its poor unloading performance, the BSP is facing a double whammy of reduced production as well as demurrage charges. It is now liable to pay crores of rupees for detaining its rakes beyond free time,” the Railways said in a statement.
Demurrage is the charge payable on failure to unload or load and release the rakes within the mutually agreed schedule. The railways stated that the BSP is not running at its full production capacity due to the shortage of raw materials such as imported coal, and iron, ore among others. However, the SAIL company is consistently detaining the rakes inside the plant for a long time for want of unloading.
The Railways for the purpose of levying demurrage charges treats the entire group of wagons for loading/unloading as one unit. Grant of free time and levy of demurrage on a rake is linked with the handling capacity of the siding, a short track at the side of the main railway line where trains go when they are not being used.