LUMDING JN

As a part of the initiatives by Northeast Frontier Railway to further improve the freight loading/unloading from various un-tapped locations, discussions with various stake holders are being held regularly. Loading and unloading of commodities from nearest locations help the local economy to flourish apart from making the essential items available for common people. Discussions are being held with traders by the Business Development Units (BDUs) of Northeast Frontier Railway about how they will be able to send their commodities to outside or receive delivery of materials from outside with lesser cost of transportation. These discussions by the BDUs within their respective areas are also helping to find new segment of traffic for movement by train. In a recent such initiative, the BDU of Rangiya division under Northeast Frontier Railway organised a meeting with North Assam Chambers of Commerce and Industry at Tezpur o­n 3^rd September, 2021.

 During the interactive session, various issues including potential for new loading from Dekargaon station, problems faced by the business community during loading/unloading were discussed. Demand for piecemeal traffic towards Dekargaon station aiming at facilitating transportation of goods of small scale industries was also discussed. Idea of Kisan Rail services to assist Individual/group of farmers, State Marketing/Co-operative Federation, Co-operative Societies, Food Processor units, etc aimed at ensuring a fast transportation of agricultural produce along with  subsidy was shared with the business community. Business communities were also informed that they can easily transport their commodities from their nearest convenient railway station at a much cheaper rate in comparison to road sector.     

It may be noted that N.F. Railway has set up Business Development Units (BDUs) at all the Divisions i.e. Katihar, Alipurduar, Rangiya, Lumding and Tinsukia and also at Zonal Head Quarters level to increase the freight transportation volume. The initiatives by the BDUs of various divisions have been successful in bringing in new mode of traffic to railways from road sector.

Northeast Frontier Railway has started transportation of rubber sheets and products as a new stream of goods traffic from Tripura to various destinations. Substantial production of rubber sheets takes place in Tripura. More than 90,000 tonnes of rubber is produced annually in Tripura which is having about 87000 hectares of rubber plantation.

Tripura exported more than 53000 tonnes of rubber during the financial year 2020-21 to places like Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Delhi. Transportation normally takes place through road sector. As part of the BDU initiative of the Lumding division of Northeast Frontier Railway Road shows were conducted at different locations of Tripura in co-operation with the state government. Interactions with rubber traders were held. Rubber is mainly produced in West Tripura, South Tripura and Sipahijala districts of Tripura which are served by railway stations like Sabroom, Belonia, Udaipur, Agartala and Jirania. Rubber traders were informed that they can easily transport rubber from their nearest convenient railway station at a much cheaper rate in comparison to road sector. For example; cost of transportation of per tonne of rubber by railway from Jirania to Delhi, Jalandhar and Sealdah is Rs. 2492.80, Rs. 2342.60 and Rs. 1745.90 respectively. In comparison, the cost of transportation of per tonne by road for the same distance is Rs. 4500.00, Rs. 5500.00 and Rs. 3500.00. Low cost of transportation will also result in overall cheaper availability of products to the end customer as transport costs reduce.