MINISTER OF STATE FOR RAILWAYS INSPECTS NEW DELHI RAILWAY STATION
The Minister of State
for Railways, Shri Bandaru Dattatraya inspected New Delhi Railway
Station this morning to see for himself state of cleanliness and
working of other passenger amenities there. He inspected unreserved
computerised reservation system, toilets, water tabs, catering
stalls, waiting rooms, manual cleaning of tracks and interacted
with a large number of passengrs alighting from Sampurna Kranti
Express and A.P.Express. The Minister was appreciative of the
general level of satisfaction of passengers. There were, however,
complaints of water scarcity at Balarshah and Nagpur stations.
There were also complaints about overcharging by porters.
Shri Dattatraya also
heard grievances of passengers and issued instructions to senior
officials of Northern Railway and Divisional Railway Manager of
Delhi on the spot to redress their complaints.
The Minister expressed
his concern over fleecing and extortion of passengers by Government
Railway Police/Railway Protection Force in unreserved compartments
and directed the concerned officials to stop this menace by taking
deterrent action against erring police personnel.
The Minister also
expressed his concern over the state of cleanliness of tracks
and ordered the officials to improve sanitation in this regard.
Representatives of
porters also met the Minister and urged him to increase the existing
rate of Rs.9 per 35 Kg of luggage, to which the Minister agreed
to examine sympathetically. He also assured the porters that their
grievances relating to winter uniform would be looked into.
Later, talking to
the media persons, Shri Dattatraya, announced that the adequacy
of manual cleanliness of tracks would be assessed and a plan would
be worked out for proper cleaning of tracks. Besides, mechanised
cleaning of trains in collaboration with Eureka Forbs, which was
started as a pilot project at Ratlam, would be extended to 14
more stations including new Delhi Railway Station. In addition,
clean train facilities were being extended to 50 major stations.
Added to this, modular toilets would be introduced in one thousand
coaches this year. Also, unreserved computerised ticketing system
introduced at 23 stations of Northern Railway last year was being
extended to 23 more stations to decongest booking centres. The
Minister further said that the number of unreserved compartments
which were two at present would be increased to four in all long
distance mail/express trains.
Shri Dattatraya announced
that by June 2003, one Cyber Café with 12 terminals would
be set up on platform No.12 of New Delhi Station on cost sharing
basis with a private agency at a cost of Rs.15 lakhs.
