Railways Surprise Checks on Trains to Find out Deficiencies in Passenger Amenities

New Delhi: North Central Railway conducted a special drive to find out shortcomings in passenger amenities and address passengers’ grievances. Led by Senior Divisional Commercial Manager (Coaching), Himanshu Shukla, as many as 50 trains were checked in surprise raids this week.

A senior railway official said the drive was directed to check for facilities like cleanliness of coaches and lavatories in trains, lights, fans, air conditioning of coaches, availability of water, linen, charging points, and other safety measures.

Elaborating the surprise checks in trains, a senior official of Northern Railway told ETV Bharat, “Railway Board passenger committee teams often conduct such surprise checks in trains across the rail network to ensure all facilities should be provided to passengers during journey.”

Amenities like quality food, pure drinking water, clean lavatories, proper lighting, and other safety measures should be available in each and every coach.

During the recent checks as many as 40 issues relating to malfunctioning fans, lack of cleanliness, water taps and other safety measures came to light. The inspecting teams referred the issues to concerned departments for rectification.

“In the rail network, there is a post of Chief Commercial Manager Passenger Services who constitute teams and these teams visit different stations and trains for checking. In fact, DRMs and ADRMs also keep checking trains to provide better facilities to the passengers. If the team finds any shortcoming during the inspection then it can take action against the concerned official or contractor,” the official pointed out.

Similar monitoring actions are continuously being run in Prayagraj division to provide facilities to passengers.

In the special campaign, 25 commercial inspectors checked 50 trains under the supervision of senior railway officials.

Giving his comment on the issue, Eastern Railway’s Chief Public Relation Officer, Diptimoy Dutta told ETV Bharat, “Every concerned official has a schedule to check all necessary facilities as well as safety related issues and note down points if they find any shortcoming during the inspections. Later, these shortcomings are fixed on priority basis which is the existing practice of railways.”

In a safety review meeting held earlier this week, Arun Kumar Jain, General Manager, South Central Railway emphasized on the safety of train operations and focused on passenger’s safety at all levels by inspecting assets related to safety.