Basic facilities elude Kalunga Railway siding

Rourkela: About two years after it was established, the Kalunga Railway Siding (KRS) under the South Eastern Railway is still deprived of several basic facilities. With road condition inside the siding in bad shape, vehicular movement and business has hampered.

Set up in October 2010, the siding lacks good road facility, for which transporters find it inconvenient and difficult for transporting various materials from the siding.

Prasanna Kumar Jena, a local trader of steel material transporting, expressed his unhappiness over the lack of basic facilities. “The miserable condition of the road inside the siding is a major problem in smooth transport of various materials from Rourkela Steel Plant,” he rued.

In rainy season, the situation worsens with the siding area turning into almost a swamp as mud and slush are found everywhere. The area is riddled with potholes and craters where rain waters remain stagnant. Heavy vehicles like trawlers, trucks and cranes engaged in loading and unloading of materials find it difficult to move smoothly. Absence of a proper drainage system has added to the problem.

Damaged tracks in the railway siding at several places are causing a lot of problems for wagon movement. Moreover, various materials and heavy bundles of coils are often dumped on the track. This has led to accidents many a time in the past.

The siding has neither a boundary nor proper lighting facility, for which unloading operation during night gets hampered. The two light towers have fallen into disuse for the last three months.