“The ministry sanctioned Rs 170 crore for SCoR in the budget announced recently. The works would hopefully begin soon,” said a senior railway officer. With the announcement of budget allocations in the railway ministry’s pink book, it is clear that the ministry is keen on speeding up the works on the South Coast Railway (SCoR) zone.
With Visakhapatnam as the headquarters of SCoR, officials here are preparing to initiate works related to the zonal headquarters, like creation of office space, residential quarters for both officers and staff, welfare infrastructure such as hospitals and recreational facilities. As per the detail project report (DPR) submitted by the officer on special duty earlier, at least Rs 111 crore would be required to develop the headquarters.
As per the norms for different grades of officers and staff as stipulated in the Railway Board’s letter number 5720, dated August 12, 1976, a general manager cadre officer must have office space of 60 square meters while lower-level cadre officers, like Group C, must have six meters of office space. “The total office space needed to house 170 officers and 1,080 group C staff is 11,105 square meters. Since the existing divisional office has a plinth area of 11,536 square meters, there would be no big exercise involved in creating office space,” the railway officer said, while adding that the existing Waltair division office can readily be used to cater to the immediate requirements of the new zonal headquarters.
The expected staff and officer strength for the headquarters will be around 3,000. Since nearly 1,800 staff already works at the Waltair division, there would be no need to transfer incumbent staff to other places, except the junior staff depending on the requirement of the newly-formed Rayagada division or SCoR, the railway officials said.