Foreign trips galore by railway body
Officers went on 121 foreign trips in 10 years, activist finds
Mumbai: At a time when bureaucrats are under the scanner for corruption and overspending public money, it has come to light that government officers of the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) went on 121 foreign trips in 10 years for a myriad study tours.
Between 2003-2004 and 2012-13, the MRVC incurred expenses totalling Rs29.28 million (Dh1.9 million) for foreign trips alone and of this, Rs3.82 million in 2012-13 for a study tour to inspect power cables, said activist Anil Galgali who obtained the information through a Right To Information query.
He said: “The MRVC officers made trips to several foreign countries to carry out a technical study for commercial development of railway land and airspace in Mumbai.” Spending Rs241,964 on every foreign trip, the MRVC, Galgali says, shook off the inertia it showed right after its formation in 1999, in carrying out railway projects specifically focused on Mumbai, to undertake foreign tours even before a single project had taken off in the city.
“The organisation still is a place where almost every officer has the privilege of going on foreign trips for the flimsiest of reasons,” says Galgali. Its managing directors, P.C. Sehgal, A.K. Verma and Rakesh Saksena, made 12 trips to various countries such as the UK, China, Japan, Austria, France, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Malaysia, South Korea, Malaysia and Holland on study tours.
Chief administrative officer, Chetna Kumar, flew to Spain and the UK in January, 2003, for Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor technology while Vishnu Kumar, director of projects, went to Germany and Australia in 2006 for training abroad under contract with M/S Siemens. He also undertook more trips to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore in May, 2007, for a technical study for commercial development of railway land and airspace in Mumbai. Other officers, including R P Bhave, secretary and managing director, travelled abroad.
However, Rakesh Saksena, managing director of the MRVC, defended the foreign trips as essential to understanding the advancement in engineering and transportation. With Siemens being awarded the contract for electrical fitting for multiple units, he said, officials had to travel abroad for various reasons such as negotiations for finance and technology transfer. Similar trips were made to other countries.
They could not finalise a deal sitting in Mumbai just to save a few thousand rupees on travel, he added. An MRVC spokesperson said: “MRVC has completed projects worth Rs45 billion so far and it must be understood that Rs30 million was spent during a 10-year period.”
Galgali said: “We can understand their frequent trips if it really helped in finding practical solutions to the myriad railway problems in the city. But it is everyone’s knowledge that the umpteen problems faced by Mumbaikars every day are the result of pending projects and the railway authority’s inefficiency and not working towards finding quick solutions.”
It is strange, the RTI activist thinks, “how the foreign tours could help MRVC learn how to commercially develop railway land in the country, especially when the state and central governments have successfully and commercially developed vacant land across the country.”
He adds that the official guidelines regarding foreign tours issued by the Director (Public Sector Undertaking) of Railway Board dated May 22, 2009, clearly mention that as far as possible efforts should be made to use modern communication technology like video conferencing and so on. Visits abroad should be undertaken only when absolutely necessary, he added.
