Four-decade-old Railways unit specialising in procurement to close

20 Oct 2022 CW Team

The Railway Ministry has ordered the closure of the Central Organisation for Modernisation of Workshops (COFMOW), a four-decade-old technical agency that specialises in machine acquisition for railways. The decision is consistent with the strategy of reducing waste by closing down government organisations in Railways that have outlived their usefulness, as recommended by Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, last year. COFMOW was established in 1979 to modernise several Railways production units and other workshops in the process of switching from mechanical equipment to more advanced, computer-controlled machines. It gathered competence in acquiring complex machinery for railways, giving to the process institutional knowledge of costs and technical soundness, as well as compatibility with modern machines.

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