Chennai garners host of facilities, big city to get enhanced water supply
S Vishnu Sharmaa, INN/Chennai, @svs037
Host of happy news have garlanded Chennai on February 24 only to make it a rememberable day for itself, thanks to Southern Railway and NLC India Limited. Chennai is known to battle water scarcity, said Union Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal.
He was at Chennai Central on February 24 to lay foundation stone for installation of 200 pre-fabricated toilets over Southern Railway under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of NLC India Limited and constructing foot-over-bridge at Guindy railway station.
He also dedicated two pedestrian subways at Level Crossing 32 and 30 in Chengalpet – Tambaram section and a renovated booking office and PRS centre at Chennai Egmore. Piyush Goyal also inaugurated booking office at second entry of Guindy railway station. Speaking after inaugurating these facilities across railway stations in Chennai, Union Minister Goyal said NLC India Limited is known for supplying 45 mld of water to this big city.
Very soon this would be hiked to 90 mld, this will be very helpful to Chennai where water availability is an issue, he said. I have asked the personnel of the company to take all measures to ensure this could be done at the earliest. The company has witnessed a tremendous growth of 80 percent in its installed capacity in the last four years.
The popular establishment will witness more growth, for the plans are to invest Rs 23,000 crores for taking up works in power generation, solar energy and various other projects. Speaking about railways he said, level crossings in the secondary lines have been eliminated, focus now would be on reducing level crossings on the major routes of Golden Quadrilateral.
He said soon 30 more advanced Train 18s would be made. After that another 100 more would be manufactured so as to put them to use across the nation. Effort of Integral Coach Factory (ICF) that lied behind Train 18’s making deserves a rich salute. The ICF personnel work is excellent and I disapprove the criticism heaped on them with regards to their work, he said.
Saying that 2017-18 is the safest year for Indian Railway with unfortunate events remaining at all time low, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said they wish to perform better in the present year with greater stress on safety. General Manager of Southern Railway R K Kulshrestha, divisional railway manager of Chennai division Naveen Gulati were among those present.