Coimbatore: Acute financial crunch is crippling the Southern Railway, where it has been a huge struggle even to carry out maintenance work, its general manager Rakesh Misra said here on Saturday.
“It has become a difficult task even to carry out the regular maintenance work due to financial crunch. The railway has already drained out the money available for maintenance works and it is going to be a big challenge to carry out such works in the coming months,” he said in a candid media conference after inspecting the Coimbatore railway junction.
The general manager said the Southern Railway averaged annual revenue of over Rs 10,000 crore but then its expenditure was far in excess of that.
“Almost 60 per cent of the revenue is spent on staff salaries and 25 to 30 per cent on electricity charges. That leaves us with very little to carry out even regular maintenance works for the next three months,” he said. DRM Sujatha Jayaraj, MP P.R. Natarajan and station master L. Chinnaraj were present during the press meet.
