MaRa’s inferior oil causes trains to stop midway and destroys engines 

Wednesday 1 of August 2012
(Lanka-e-News -31.July.2012, 11.55PM) Due to the supply of inferior quality fuel by the MaRa govt. , the Railways Dept . had incurred monumental losses as many of its railway engines have got damaged while the cranes in the Ports too have gone out of commission, according to reports. The trains which ran on the inferior fuel , had not been able to travel at the expected speed and had stalled on the tracks causing train delays to the detriment of all , specially the train commuters.

All the S10 and S11 trains driven by the Colombo electric power supply had ground to a total halt owing to this inferior quality fuel . In addition two railway engines driven by Maradana Loco electric power had also failed to perform.

By this afternoon (31) , over 15 engines have suffered damage .

In a functioning engine , there is one filter by the name of Sepa , and two ordinary filters. When one new filter is installed the train can run for about 300 hours. In most cases it is one filter that has to be discarded. But due to the inferior quality fuel, all the filters had to be replaced even before a 10 hour run. For each filter , the railways dept. has to spend Rs. 50,000/- of the people’s funds.

Due to the use of inferior fuel on power generating sets and two railway engines, they are in a state of repair and cannot be used. To purchase new filters for them , a huge sum of money has to be spent. Moreover , when a filter is being discarded , a large quantity of oil also goes waste – All these are waste of people’s monies.

To compound the confusion , the Ceylon petroleum Corp .(CPC) has received about 150 complaints from vehicle users charging that due to the use of inferior fuel their vehicles have suffered damage. 40 vehicles of the Govt.’s own health Ministry have also been damaged . The private bus operators association claims there are complaints that , over 50 buses had been adversely affected due to the usThe MaRa regime which drove the country into despair on a grave fuel crisis previously too by importing inferior quality fuel , has this time made no announcements because it is guilty of importing this inferior fuel from the same supplier who cheated the country in many millions by supplying inferior fuel.

In the circumstances , it is being questioned widely by the suffering people who have to pay for all the sins of the reckless rulers who are playing ducks and drakes with public funds whether the supplier is cheating or the supplier and the Govt. are getting together and cheating on the country.e of inferior fuel.