To encouraging cashless transactions and to make Indian Railways truly digital, Indian Railway has started cashless delivery of meals on train. This would help check overcharging on food items to the passengers, claim the officials. The catering staff members would be given PoS (point of sale) terminal machines and stringent action would be taken against the staff members if they fail to produce the bills against the food purchased, the officers warn.
Notably, the Indian Railways had given responsibility of catering of food to IRCTC department after it received a number of complaints about the quality of food supplied in the trains and also about over- pricing of the food items served to the passengers. To help the railways have an image makeover, IRCTC has started cashless delivery of food items in the trains.
The officers say that the system would be introduced in all the trains running under Northern Railway. It is learnt that In several zones, IRCTC has started PoS terminal facility at the pantry cars. This facilitates the officers concerned to monitor the sales digitally.
The Chief Public Relation Officer Northern Railway, Nitin Chowdhary said, “It is mandatory to give bills to the customers against the food they purchase. But it was found that the pantry car staffers often avoided giving bills on the pretext of unavailability of the bill books.
Now, with the system being put into place, such deceit would be checked. The passengers would be spared overcharging of the food items they take while in trains.
It would at the same time help the department to know the volume of the sale exactly. By way of introducing the system, IRCTC has made arrangements to give PoS machines to its vendors. We hope it would go a long way in checking corruption and in providing quality food at the right prices to the passengers. It would help transparency.”