Dedicated railway workers’ efforts ignored, India to lay new track
Although it was estimated that one billion rupees would be needed to repair the damage, caused to the Southern rail track, by the tsunami of four years ago, a group of railway employees volunteered their service and completed the restoration of the track, which experts said would take one year, in 57 days at a cost of only 450 million rupees.
But the authorities have disregarded the dedication and the voluntary efforts of those workers and have now handed over the building of new railway tracks to an Indian company, completely shattering the morale of those workers, the Organization for Protection of the Properties and the Rights of Railway Employees said in a press release yesterday (26).
It said that though four years had elapsed since the tsunami which destroyed the lives of thousands of people and damaged 86 kilometres of the 136-kilometre southern rail track, the government was grateful for the voluntary effort of the workers who made personal sacrifices to complete its rehabilitation but the authorities were causing worse devastation than tsunami by spending millions on foreign companies for projects the railway workers could themselves contribute to without spending so it said.
Source: The Island
Tags: coastal railway line, devastation, india, projects, rail track, railway employees, railway track, railway workers, rehabilitation, restoration, tsunami, voluntary effort
