09 June 2004	Wednesday	20 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

NEW DELHI, June 8: India's maverick new Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav called on Tuesday for train wheels to be made from junk scrap metal to deal a blow to a mafia flourishing on selling garbage from the country's vast rail network.

Mr Yadav, whose criminal past was seized upon by the opposition to stall parliament on Tuesday, said his idea stemmed from reports that corrupt officials in his ministry were profiting from selling garbage from trains, including discarded bottles, table scraps and industry refuse.

"There is large-scale corruption in the auctioning of rail scrap," Yadav told reporters. "I may instead utilise it for manufacturing wheels for trains," he said of the state-run railways that carries around 13 million people a day.

"The huge quantity of railway scrap can be utilised to manufacture wheels indigenously (and) can save valuable foreign exchange being used to import these wheels," Yadav said.

Yadav said he has called a meeting of vendors of the Indian Railways, the world's largest non-military employer, for a feasibility report. "If needed new factories for manufacturing wheels could be established in backward areas such as Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and the northeastern states," he said. -AFP