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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
1
150 Years of Sri Lankan Railways: Evaluation of the
Services from Employee and Customer Perspectives R.A. Kesavan1, C. Chandrakumar2, A.K. Kulatunga3, J. Gowrynathan4, R.T.D. Rajapaksha5, R.K.G.D.M.
Senewiratne6, and D. Laguleshwaran7
1Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya-20400, Sri Lanka 2,3,4,5,6 Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya-20400,
Sri Lanka
7ATT Systems (India) Pvt Ltd, Hiriyur, Chitradurga-577532, Karnataka, India
[email protected] [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
Abstract— Sri Lankan (Ceylon) Railways celebrated its 150
years of service on 27th December 2014. Though its main
purpose was on freight transport in the early years, the trend
has changed towards passenger transportation afterwards. Sri
Lankan rail network expanded to its peak by 1940s under
British rulers with two rail gauges of broad and narrow.
Later, one of the narrow gauge tracks was removed due to
high operational cost, and longer travel times and part of the
track was replaced with broad gauge. Three decades of
insurgency in the country lead to reduce the full service
covering whole network from time to time and only in this
year full network come to operational with Northern and
Talaimannar line (Connection between South India via Ferry
service) back in service nearly after 23 years of abundance.
With the development of North and Thalaimannar lines with
and upgrading of Southern line with an Indian grant, the
authorities plan to increase the maximum speeds of these
trains at 100kmph. Further, in the last four years, Sri Lanka
Railways moving towards phase lift in rolling stock in order to
improve passenger service. With the introduction of Push Pull
units with AC compartments with air suspension systems and
introduction of luxury compartments served by private
company aiming at foreign tourists are some of them.
However, when compared with many other developing
countries in the region, though Ceylon railways has 150 years
of long history, current level of service, and working facilities
are not at a satisfactory level. Therefore, this research is done
in order to recognize the customer perspective on the current
level of quality and to identify their own grievances as well as
the employee perspective on the current administration and
functionality of Sri Lanka Railways. A survey was carried out
with the assistant of structured questionnaires designed for
different segments and face to face interviews in order to
collect data. Statistical analyses were carried out in order to
find out main complications and their interdependency for the
service degradations and few other areas identified during the
interviews. It is determined that the main issue faced by the
commuters is the poor service due to lack of fund allocations
for the maintenance of existing facilities and from employee
side political interferences to the service has created several
managerial issues, high bureaucracy and lack of adequate
technological inputs have led to poor service. Finally, a
sustainable model has been presented to revamp the service
back on track in order to deliver better service with better
employee satisfaction.
Keywords— Bureaucracy, Degradations, Employee
satisfaction, Freight transportation, Political interferences,
Rolling stock
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Overview of SLR
Sri Lankan Railways, one of the oldest railway systems in
Asia which celebrated its 150 years recently. This service
was introduced by the British rulers in early 19th century
for the planters to bring their harvest from inland to sea
port located in Colombo. Though this mode of
transportation was the main source of transportation for
freight and passengers for few decades, after the
introduction of road based public transportation in late
1940’s revenues form this service declined drastically, and
most for the time operated at a loss. Although this service
has survived for 150 years even at a considerable loss, it
carries the daily commuters to their workplaces, students to
their schools, and tourists to their most admirable
destinations. Today, SLR operates approximately 310
trains, comprising 45 Long-distance and 12 Intercity trains,
and carries appropriately 0.29 million passengers daily. Not
only that but also SLR maintains1420 km of rail tracks, 175
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
2
locomotives, 900 carriages, and the signaling network. The
administration of SLR is composed with ten sub-
departments, and three units. Distinct heads for each sub-
department have been assigned and they are committed to
report to the General Manager of Railways (GMR), and the
GMR reports to the Secretary of the Ministry of Transport.
B. Historical Evolution
The British, who introduced Rail in Sri Lanka in 1864 to
transport coffee from hill country plantations to Europe via
Colombo city. In 1871, many coffee plantations were
destroyed due to the coffee blight, and it was the period
where tea plantations replaced coffee. Under corporate
ownership and management control by companies, the tea
production flourished, and the need for more railways in
the hill country too grew consequently. In order to transport
tea from hill country to Colombo, and labour, machinery,
rice, etc., from Colombo to hill country, the British
expanded their railway tracks by another 100 miles.
Emerging requirement for agricultural developments
further increased the need to install railway lines in the
West, South West, and North West of the island. Though
railways was initiated in Sri Lanka for the trade purposes,
today railways has a prominent place as transport media of
this tiny island. Main Line to Kandy was extended to the
historical city of Anuradhapura, went further north to
Kankesanturai and west to Talaimannar. This extension
was carried out mainly to bring South Indian labours for
the tea and rubber plantations, and also for importing rice
and other food items. Prevalence of the natural harbour in
Trincomalee justified the reason to lay railway line to the
dry zone at that time. These lines were laid with light
section rails, since the narrow gauge section to serve the
rubber plantations East of Colombo, known at the Kelani
Valley Line. A similar branch, in upcountry was laid from
Nanu-Oya on the Main Line through very difficult terrain
to serve the tea plantations around Nuwara-Eliya.
Even with the development of land road based
transportation after 1940’s Sri Lankan railways delivered
service with many changes which included dieselization of
motive power in 1950s, change to colour light signalling
and doubling the
lines etc. Figure
01 shows the
timeline of the
significant events
which were
happening over
the 150 years. Though there are
some physical
infrastructure
developments in
the recent past, the
SLR has been
operated with leap
frog development
and the gap
between revenue
collection and
operational
expenditure has
being increased
over the last few
decades in a
negative way.
During this period
there were no
structural changes
carried out
to the organization. Figure 1: Timeline for the development of SLR [1, 7, and 18]
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
3
However, similar to other government organizations,
political interventions and trade unionization has being
increased significantly.
II. REVIEWS ON LITERATURE – OPEN & CLOSE DOMAINS
It is noticeable that there very few research works have
been carried out in railway industry in the recent past.
Though there are many publications available in this
discipline related to Sri Lanka dating back to 1920’s [1] up
to 1960’s, it has declined afterwards and the latest research
paper published in Sri Lankan Engineering Journal was in
2004, this shows the interest among the professionals and
academics about this service in the recent past.
A. Way and Works
The very first paper was published in 1922 by Simeon [2]
discussed on traversing of Eastern railway line and the
remedies taken to minimize sharp curves and gradients in
low country. Further this work discusses some complexities
occurred when surveying last segment of Up country line.
In the same year, another technical note was presented by
Bowen [3] on doubling the main line between Ragama and
Rambukkana. This paper highlights the all civil works
which includes further levelling of gradients, strengthening
embankments, bridge and culvert work and duplicating a
tunnel and reconstruction of several stations to
accommodate dual lines and further improvements on the
existing track as well. Also Bowen [3] presented the main
port extension line to facilitate direct link between up
country line toward harbour where most freight traffic was
existed. Further, they expected to ease the traffic between
two main stations where most commuter trains ply. The
Eastern line extension work was also presented by the same
author [4] in 1925, the complexities due to flood plains and
some topological issues in several sections were
highlighted. Further, he has revealed the future
developments they had considered even at that time, which
is very much rare to find presently. Maintenance issues of
railway track for the safety of passengers has been
highlighted by Silva in 1965[5]. In this he has mentioned
the complexity of track maintenance issue without much
effect to the normal service and special cases how way and
works department handle the safety of the passengers etc.
In addition, there were two cases of repairing of summit
tunnel [6] and bridge maintenance issues [7].
B. Operational Aspects
With respect to operational aspects, some considerations
had been made to increase the train speeds was presented
by De Silva [8] in 1969, where he compared some of the
world leaders in speedy railway services in Japan and
France at that time and Sri Lankan level of service and
level of investment required for the improvement of track
and feasibility issues for transform to that standards. In
addition to this, Silva has presented a paper on
modernization aspects of Ceylon Government Railways in
1970. In this work, he has mentioned about the steps taken
in motive power, way and works as well as signaling sub
departments to cater the increasing demand and savings
made due to the changes etc. [9]. After this study, there
were no account on the overall development of CGR up to
now. Widanapathiranage et al. proposed a Bus and Rail
choice model for the Colombo metropolitan region in their
manuscript [2]. This model contained four variables
namely: a difference in passenger waiting time for the
mode of travel, a difference in in-vehicle travel time, bus
and rail passenger loadings, and a difference in passenger
walking time to mode.
C. Rolling Stock
The first account on rolling stock and motive power of
CGR was presented by Head in 1928 [10] which includes
the developments took place in rolling stock to cater the
long distance and suburban services with steam
locomotives, and steam rail cars. An overview of Diesel
electric motive power was presented by Freer in 1939 [11].
This study provides detailed explanation of global picture
of dieselization of railways, and level of adaptations and
future plans of CGR at that time. An overall infrastructure
development work was presented by Head in 1931 [12]. In
1948, Rampala [13] had presented a technical paper on
rating of steam locomotives operated in CGR at that time.
Further, Black, and Rajagopal in 1956 [12] presented an
overview of CGR at that time including some changes took
place to the buildings and maintenance shops etc. After a
gap of couple of decades, in 1999, Wijesekara [14]
presented some of the innovative project, which was done
to convert normal passenger bus to be operated in railway
tracks to replace low demand lines. Later in 2002, same
author presented the complexity of rolling stock
maintenance in the post era of steam rolling stock [15]. The
author has proposed a sustainable model which can be
adapted for maintenance, and sustenance of service to a
developing country which does not have more funding to
acquire high tech rolling stock from developed world.
D. Signalling
First account on signalling was presented by Brendon in
1921 [16] on Mechanical Signalling in CGR. In there,
Brendon explains how mechanical Signalling system works
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
4
and complexities involved in that technology in detail. In
1924, Shillitoe [17] presented on track circulating to
prevent errors made by signalmen. The complexities of
implementing that technology is highlighted in that paper.
Anketell, carried out a study on Block system, which was
used for signalling. He discussed several types of block
systems like: block working on double lines-Lock and
Block, Two-position Lock and Block, and Three-position
Lock and Block [18] which were used in CGR at that time.
The colour light signalling system was presented by
Seneviratna in 1960 [19]. An overview of colour light
system and adaptation of that to local context was
presented there. After Seneviratna's work in 1960, there are
no any other research work on signalling related to CGR.
Based on the existing literature it is known that there are no
studies have been carried out related to the present status of
railway service in Sri Lanka for nearly a half a century.
Therefore, the emerging need to carry out a study is
identified with the following aims, and objectives.
Evaluate the developments related to service expansion –
It was required to study the expansion of the prevailing
Sri Lanka Railways (SLR) in order to carry further
studies to determine the possible areas for development
and expansions.
Investigate customer, and employee perspective about
the organization and services – Studying the perspectives
of the stakeholders of SLR is very vital, since it reveals
the actual scenario and the requirements. The analyses of
the perspectives will support to design very propitious
Sri Lanka Railway.
Propose a mechanism to improve the current service and
maintenance work – It is the final and the most important
objective of this study; proposing a mechanism to
improve the standards of the prevailing service and
maintenance, in order to create a better SLR.
III. METHODOLOGY
The research methodology consists of several steps
spanning mainly in two branches. Initially, in order to
identify the current level of service and employee
perspective on SLR, interviews and surveys were carried
out. Structured questionnaires were designed to cover
commuters and diverse employee categories of the SLR
Operations departmental staff which includes maintenance
foremen, station masters, drivers etc. In addition to this
process related technical literature also surveyed in order to
find out how service has evolved over a century and what
was the level of planning in yesteryears especially under
the British rulers. Later, primary data collected from the
survey was analyzed statistically to identify
interdependencies and relevant aspects raised in both
passenger and employee perspectives were tested for co-
relationships. After critical reviewing of the literature
published so far and based on the conclusions of the
statistical analysis, a sustainable restructuring model was
developed for the future development of the service.
A. Data/ Information Collection
A questionnaire-based interview methodology is used to
gather information from the stake holders. Interviewees are
separated into several major groups and they are even
categorized into sub-groups.
B. Design & Development of Questionnaire
Questionnaire is designed in order to receive the exact
perceptions of each stakeholders, in order to provide the
meticulous depiction of the scenario. Initially, certain areas
for each stakeholder are chosen. For each sub-category of
employees questions are designed individually. Working
conditions, fund allocations, services, working hours, and
their pay are the main areas which are taken into
consideration for the station masters. Questions for the
drivers are designed based on the factors like: recruitment
procedure, accommodation facilities, maintenance services,
and their salaries. Training, maintenance services, and
service hours are the key areas, which are clarified from the
foremen. The key areas which are considered for
passengers namely: the way of use, frequency of use,
journey duration, purpose of use, time schedules, on-board
Figure 2: Proposed methodology for the study
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
5
facilities, infrastructure facilities and security. Questions
related to day passes, and monthly passes are questioned at
the commuters, and students. From all the stakeholders,
questions related to further improvements are questioned.
IV. STATISTICAL ANALYSES
In order to develop a sustainable model for an improved
SLR, it is determined that using statistical analytical
methods would plot the variations, and relationships
thoroughly among the factors like: passengers, costs,
income, cargo transportation etc. with time.
A. SLR Employees related Analyses – Determination of
Employees’ Salary Satisfaction of SLR by Fitting a Model
A primary (full) model is fitted with the suspected factors
that may relate to the satisfaction of the employees. The
Generalized Linear Model (GLM) has been fitted with
satisfaction of the basic salary as a response variable and
factors namely: improvement in service during their service
time, accommodation, and rest are considered as
explanatory variables. Since the p-value of the intercept
and improvement in service during their service time are
not statistically significant, backward elimination
procedure has been used to remove the most insignificant
variable as well as to retain the significant variables. This
procedure is recursively continued until all response
variables in the model are statistically significant. Finally,
from the backward elimination procedure a model has been
fitted to discover the factors which relate to satisfaction of
employees regarding their basic salary. The saturated
model is given below in table 2.
TABLE I : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN FULL MODEL
Variable Estimate Std. error T-value P-value
Accommodation 0.16637 0.09790 1.699 0.009
Rest -0.07965 0.09937 -0.802 0.004
TABLE II : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN SATURATED MODEL
B. Passengers related Analyses
i. Determination of Passengers’ Satisfaction of SLR
by Fitting a Model
This test is performed in order to determine the factors,
which affect the passengers’ satisfaction of SLR. The
Generalized Linear Model (GLM) has been fitted with
satisfaction of SLR as a response variable and factors
namely: security, accidents, mobile traders, infrastructure,
seats, commodity travel, parking facilities, nearest bus stop,
obtaining ticket, reaching and arriving trains on time are
considered as explanatory variables.
TABLE III : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN FULL MODEL
Variable Estimate Std.
error
T -
value
P -
value
Intercept 0.77957 0.58080 1.342 0.18467
Security 0.08422 0.12018 0.701 0.48621
Accidents -0.34453 0.12179 -2.829 0.00637
Mobile traders -0.05547 0.11517 -0.482 0.63186
Infrastructure 0.19428 0.15094 1.287 0.20310
Comfortably of seats 0.15681 0.12520 1.252 0.21534
Seating facility 0.12676 0.10494 1.208 0.23188
Commodity travel 0.11779 0.10685 1.102 0.27480
Bus stop 0.27480 0.12292 0.721 0.47377
Parking facility -0.07202 0.11525 -0.625 0.53443
Reaching time -0.02237 0.14452 -0.155 0.87754
Arrival time 0.26665 0.13704 1.946 0.05646
Obtaining ticket -0.08130 0.12389 -0.656 0.51420
Variable Estimate Std.
error T-value P-value
Intercept 0.01536 0.11490 0.134 0.894
Improvement in
service 0.05080 0.09722 0.556 0.582
Accommodation 0.16229 0.09910 1.638 0.011
Rest -0.07366 0.10088 -0.730 0.004
Figure 3: Stakeholders of the study
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
6
Since, p value of most of the variables except accidents,
and arrival time are not statistically significant; backward
elimination procedure has been used to remove the most
insignificant variables as well as to retain the significant
variables. This procedure is recursively continued, until all
the response variables in the model become statistically
significant. Finally, from the backward elimination
procedure a model has been fitted to discover the factors,
which relate to passengers’ satisfaction of SLR. The
saturated model is given below,
TABLE IV : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN SATURATED MODEL
Variable Estimate Std. error T value P value
Intercept 0.6796 0.2927 2.322 0.0230
Security 0.2408 0.1024 2.352 0.0213
Accidents -0.2364 0.1098 -2.152 0.0347
Comfortably
of seats 0.2283 0.1051 2.171 0.0331
Arrival time 0.2495 0.1013 2.463 0.0161
ii. Karl Pearson Chi-Squared Test
This test is used to clarify that the suspected relationships
among inter-related variables namely: infrastructure, arrival
time, reaching time, obtaining tickets, preferring online
tickets, types of tickets, accidents, mobile traders,
comfortably of seats, and security.
TABLE V : RESULTS OF PAIRWISE DEPENDENCY
Variables P- value Decision
Infrastructure Comfortably of
seats 0.0004 Dependent
Type of Tickets Obtaining Tickets 0.9222 Independent
Arrival Time Reaching time 2.264e-
07 Dependent
Obtaining tickets Preferring online
ticket 0.4093 Independent
Accidents Security 0.0404 Dependent
Mobile Traders Security 0.0135 Dependent
C. Freight Transportation and Fuel Consumption
Freight and cargo transportation is one of the services
provided by SLR from the past. It is also noticed that the
freight transportation has been bringing notable amount of
income from time to time. Though there are enough income
gained through freight transportation it is observed the
freight transportation has reduced. Table 6 shows the
revenues, and expenditures of SLR in last decade. It is very
obvious that SLR has been suffering with poor turnover.
Almost everyone stated that the training they receive are in
satisfactory levels. 75% of them revealed that they have
enough resting time between two consecutive service
shifts, and their mean service time is approximately 48
hours per week. They too revealed that the political
interferences have a negative impact on the services and the
growth of SLR. They also preferred that the corruption
should be eliminated, proper trainings should be provided
to handle M-9 engines, signalling systems should be
improved further, rules and regulations should be revised,
number of trains and carriages should be increased, and the
railway tracks should be further improved to meet up the
future challenges. From the GLM, the resulting model for
the employees’ satisfaction about their basic salary can be
shown as following,
Therefore, it can be inferred from the above equation that
the employees’ satisfaction is mainly depends on factors
namely: accommodation and rest. So, this concludes that
the employees demand for increased wages and they desire
for sufficient rest.
D. Passengers
From the GLM, the resulting model for the passengers’
satisfaction can be shown as following,
Therefore, it can be inferred from the above equation that
the Passengers’ satisfaction is mainly depends on factors
namely: security, accidents, seats, and arrival time.
Meanwhile, the satisfaction negatively depends on
accidents. So, this concludes that the passengers desire a
railway system with minimal accidents, and also
passengers concern about the better seating facilities, safe
railway crossings, and acceptable time schedules.
From the Karl Pearson Chi-Squared test, it can be derived
that certain variables depend on each other and while some
are not. Infrastructure facility does not depend on
comfortably of the seats. This implies the necessity for the
Satisfaction of basic salary = 0.16637*Accommodation
– 0.0795*Rest (1)
Satisfaction = 0.6796 + 0.2408*Security -
0.2364*Accidents + 0.2283*Seats + 0.2495*Arrival
time (2)
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
7
government to improve the infrastructure facility
government has rather than concentrating specifically only
on seating facilities. Obtaining tickets without many
troubles is a positive sign irrespective to the types of
tickets. Accidents, and mobile traders directly contributing
in railway accidents mostly. From Kolmogorov Smirnov
Normality test, it can be expounded that the duration of the
journey does not follow a normal distribution. Therefore, it
is hard to conclude about the significance of the journey
duration. Passenger responses reveal that 55% of the
passengers revealed that in order to improve the standards
of the SLR services, the government should increase the
carriages, trains and journeys. Peoples’ opinion towards
Express railways - 35.95% of the passengers greeted the
introduction of express railways. But 9% of them are a
dissatisfied with prevailing express railways service.
Further, 4% of them worried about the delay of reaching
the destinations, which emphasize the necessities to have
standard express railways. Peoples’ opinion regarding
online ticketing - 47% of the passengers responded
positively about online ticketing procedure. In contrast, 6%
of them disagreed, saying that the online procedure is not
applicable in all kind of ticketing, especially in 3rd class.
So it can be inferred that the passengers request the
authorities to develop the online ticketing procedure further
more in such a way that it is applicable in all kind and all
class of ticketing procedure. Passengers experienced
regarding railway accidents - The positive side about
railway accidents in Sri Lanka is that 74% of the
passengers stated that they are not experienced with any
kind of railway accidents. Since 26% of the passengers
have prone to accidents, which is significantly very high,
there can be concluded that the SLR services are not safe in
this island. Then passengers were asked what are the
suggestions to reduce the these kind of accidents in future,
15% of the passengers proposed that the maintenance
should be done for carriages and railway tracks properly,
whereas other answers do not have any significant impact
to this question. This indicates that proper maintenance can
significantly reduce the railway related accidents.
E. Operational Costs and Revenues
Operations cost of SLR plays an important role when
deciding its stability in the country economically. Fuel
consumption is considered for this study to determine the
quality of operations and maintenance. Consumption of
diesel, and lubrication oil shows an increasing pattern from
2000, except 2009. Table 7 shows the consumption of fuel
and lubricants. From table 6, and 7 it can be inferred that
SLR has a significant gap between operations expenditures
and revenue collection, which has being increased over the
recent years drastically. Even though data of last decade is
only represented in figures like: table 7 and figure 4,
previous records too reveal same pattern over the decades.
When some of the main operational expenditure were
concerned, though they almost remain same over the years
other expenditures have increased considerably impacting
more gap between incomes over expenditure. Therefore it
can be infer that excessive operations costs have negative
impacts on the quality of SLR since it cannot invest even
for day to day maintenance requirements from own
recoveries.
It is blatant that the SLR is running in loss in recent times.
Figure 4 clearly shows that the working expenditures are
raising day by day, while the total revenue is not in
satisfactory level. This morbid situation of SLR can be
related with the stakeholders of SLR directly and indirectly.
Employees are attached to SLR, since it is a secured job.
Most of them are concerned about their pay, and they
desire their short shifts. These two factors directly affect
the efficiency of them and the quality of services they
provide. Political interferences and unionizations have
indirect impacts on the effectiveness of the employees in
recruiting, and trainings. Unrevised organizational
structures, objectives, and goals never bolster the growth of
SLR indeed. Passengers are dissatisfied with the standards
of services when comparing to the services provided by
other Asian countries. Unawareness and improper
arrangements to obtain online tickets have frustrated the
passengers.
Tedious travelling durations, poor maintenance, lack of
infrastructure facilities, and improper time schedules have
reduced the interest on rail journeys. Table 7 shows that the
maintenance costs have increased drastically in recent
years, which directly has a negative impact on the total
revenue of SLR. Short shifts, and reduced working hours
are one of the reasons for recruiting excess employees for
SLR which increases the operational costs considerably.
Therefore, the SLR could not be able to allocate enough
funds for the maintenance of the carriages, and locomotives
in their budget. It is apparent that in order to overcome
these problems the higher officials of SLR have to revise
their organization structure, do strategic planning when
fund allocating, look for available opportunities, bridge the
gaps, maximize usage of resources, avoid political
interventions and unionizations etc. These solutions have
been proposed in figure 6.
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
8
V. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the previous analysis, it can be revealed that there
are two main reasons behind the deterioration of service
and these two are interrelated as well. Both reasons
namely: human resources related and technical related
aspects are caused due to poor administration. When
inquired reasons for the worst scenario, the main offender
is the politicization and unionization, which interdict taking
technically sound and most appropriate decisions at right
time. These politicization and unionizations also affect the
discipline of the employees within the organization. Poor
discipline directly affect the employee morale by reducing
their job satisfaction significantly. Meanwhile,
unawareness and lack of visions of the top management
and higher official have dominant impact on SLR and its
operations. This lack of vision includes providing
insufficient or poor quality training which is a loss to SLR,
while nobody is gaining any knowledge at all. Improper
acquisitions increase the maintenance costs considerably.
Poor job satisfaction and excess maintenance costs affect
the performance of the operations. This leads to poor
service quality and reduces revenues consequently.
Perhaps these factors even go deep into a level where
higher officials of the administration are also appointed
based on political affiliation. Even though majority of
employee categories highly deepened on technical
qualifications and skills, presently due to some actions of
the trade unions SLR could not recruit for lower and
middle level technicians and only recruitments they can do
at the moment are for the engineer levels in the technical
side and casual labours in the bottom level. However, other
services related positions namely: drivers, assistants,
station masters, guards etc. are recruited without much
troubles. Further, due to large number of trade unions and
their actions, harmony among different categories of
employees especially those involved in operations
presently at very poor level. Due to this several avoidable
delays exist.
Further, decision making time has increased considerably
due to presently available high bureaucracy. Therefore in
conclusion these issues are summarized and pictured as in
Figure 5. Since, Sri Lanka is currently moving towards
constitutional changes with re-establishing independent
commissions etc., this research propose a sustainable model
starting with restructuring the administration and almost re-
engineering the business processes of the entire
organization.
TABLE VI : REVENUES & EXPENDITURES OF SLR IN LAST 10 YEARS
Category
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Revenue from
passengers
Ordinary (Mn.) 994 1148 1385 1586 2014 2490 2363 2445 2811 3557
Season passes
(mn.) 271 331 441 447 699 777 749 794 517 930
Receipts from
goods traffic (mn.) 260 270 393 314 364 337 420 430 447 443
Gross receipts (mn.) 1678 1958 2491 2999 3671 4020 4018 4235 4952 5423
Total revenues (mn.) 3203 3707 4710 5346 6748 7624 7550 7904 8727 10353
Working
expenditure (mn.) 4328 5463 6473 7297 8225 8788 7191 8295 8648 10586
Annual turnover (mn.) -1125 -1756 -1763 -1951 -1477 -1164 359 -391 79 -233
Goods handled in
n. Tones (Mn. Tones) 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.6 2.7 1.9 2.1 1.9
Passenger
Ordinary (km
in mn.) 3170 2767 1875 2147 2932 2964 2814 2912 3340 4235
Season passes
(km in mn.) 1510 1589 1744 1773 1749 1604 1539 1663 1699 2023
Figure 4: Annual turnover - SLR
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
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TABLE VII : CONSUMPTION OF FUEL & LUBRICANTS BY LOCOMOTIVES
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Diesel litres/
engine km 3.37 3.31 3.63 3.69 3.30 3.22 3.59 4.38 4.01 2.68
Lubrication oil
litres/ engine km 0.07 0.12 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.34
The sustainable model is built
based on both human resources
(HR) related factors and
revenues. In HR aspects
political interventions and the
conflicts among the unions have
to be reduced in order to bring
peace and harmony among
several categories of employees.
When considering the revenues,
it is required to find out the
possibilities for expansions,
where additional incomes can
be brought to SLR. Among such
possibilities cargo
transportation, expansion of the
length of the loops are
significant. Since cargo and
freight transportation played a
major role in the overall revenue
of SLR in the past, it is fruitful
if the strategic planners consider
on improving the cargo and
freight transportation. With the
increasing population and the
increasing motor traffic
commuters and other daily
passengers prefer common
transportation.
By expanding the loop length
SLR can earn more revenue
through transporting more commuters in
future. Good HR practices and sufficient revenues will lead
SLR to provide excellent service quality and better
maintenance while satisfying its passengers and employees.
These suggestions have been included in figure 6 as the
sustainable model for SLR to build up a better SLR.
Figure 5: Reasons behind Poor Revenues and Service Quality
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)
10
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Figure 6: Proposed Sustainable Model for SLR