Kerosene leakage on tracks poses risk to passengers at Jammu rly station

Slum children jostle with each other between moving trains to collect oil

Always on the terror radar, Northern India’s busiest railway station of Jammu that daily witnesses rush of over 50,000 passengers sits on a powder keg in the form of continuous leakage of kerosene from a water pipeline between two tracks in front of platform number one.
Unabated leakage in turn has all the ingredients to pose grave risk to trains and passengers besides slum children, who jostle between moving trains at the spot to collect kerosene.
Over 30 long-distance trains besides DMUs (Diesel Multiple Units) daily arrive and leave the Jammu railway station, which has a vast oil depot in its vicinity where various oil companies stock their supplies of highly inflammable petrol, diesel, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas.
In fact, this oil depot caters to the fuel requirement of all the 22 districts of the state, including the Kashmir valley and Ladakh region, besides replenishing stocks of the security forces.
The Jammu railway station had been twice attacked in the past, on January 2, 2004, and on August 7, 2001.
It may also sound bizarre to many, but on a visit to the spot our team found slum children collecting leaking oil while trains were passing by on tracks between platform number one and two.
“Some eight to nine days ago the spot where the oil is leaking had caught fire and the railway authorities had to hurriedly move two trains to safety,” said Rakesh Kumar, a vendor.
The leakage might have been going on due to some damage in the pipeline of oil depots, he added.
Another vendor said despite bringing the matter to the notice of senior railway officials, nothing had happened.
“It all started over two months ago. Earlier, these children used to pick scrap and empty bottles, but now they can be seen collecting kerosene in containers and plastic bottles. By bluish colour and its odour, anyone can simply make out that it is kerosene,” he said.
“While collecting oily water in containers between the two tracks these small children from poor families least care about trains moving on both the tracks. They are hardly five to 12 years’ old,” he said.
He said the parents of these children then sell the oil in the open market.
Jammu and Kashmir faces acute scarcity of kerosene.
A small girl Ismat Ara, aged around six years, who was seen hurriedly dipping a sponge into the oily water before squeezing it into a container with her small hands between the two moving trains, said her parents send her to the railway station daily for collecting oil.
“My parents use it for fire and also sell it to others,” said the little girl.
When contacted Station Manager Ashwani Kumar, said, “We have informed the Indian Oil Corporation and engineering wing of the Railways. It is their job to plug the leakage.”
“We have also sent letters to them a number of times,” he added.
He denied any fire incident due to the kerosene leakage.