Suspension of goods trains hits industry

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, November 4

Even as manufacturing units are grappling with shortage of transporting raw and finished material but the railways has categorically announced that it would not resume plying of trains unless the safety and normalcy return to the railway tracks.

Rajesh Aggarwal, Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), said after the agitating farmer unions allowed the goods train to run over the railway tracks, Ferozepur and Ambala divisions had run together about 175 trains after October 22. However, after finding the movement of agitating people near the railway tracks as dangerously close they decided to stop plying even goods trains. Any accident could result into law and order trouble. Reiterating the stand of Railways, he said, train movement, including goods trains, would resume only after the railway lines become safe.

Textile industrial units have completely switched over to road transport to ferry their finished and raw materials after the government stopped plying of goods trains following the railway lines blockade affected by the agitating farmers.

The textile industry is facing a shortage of raw material due to non-operation of trains for the past one month.