Facing flaks from the passengers, the Prime Minister’s Office and Parliamentarians over late running of trains, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday offered freebies to pacify travellers.
Though Goyal announced that Indian Railways will provide free food and water to reserved class passengers of trains running late during mealtimes, he committed to cent percent train punctuality in the months to come when a new time table comes into effect.
The Railways has further decided to undertake major maintenance works across all its zones on Sundays. The maintenance drive would be launched once the Indian Railways reworks its time-table by August 15 and identified the trains which could be affected due to it.
“We will be combining the works from across the zones and try to carry out maximum maintenance work on Sundays. We will work towards passenger engagement, creating awareness among the passengers, informing them in advance. Whenever a train gets delayed during a meal time, we will provide free food and drinking water to the passengers,” Goyal said at a Press conference convened to address the punctuality issue.
The Railway Minister also announced that it has been decided that the time-tables of all the zonal Railways would be revised in such a way that maintenance work would be carried out in a planned manner.
Passengers would be informed about delays through SMS and advertisement in newspapers, he added. The Railways will also introduce GPS loggers in the system, which will help log the progress of each train on a real-time basis, which will then be uploaded on the Railways’ website. “The passengers can type their train number and get to know where the train is,” the Minister said.
The Railway Ministry also plans to increase the production output of the coach factories, so that spare rakes and additional coaches can be provided to standardise the rakes.
“The spare rakes will help us maintain the schedule of the outbound train, even if the incoming train is late,” Goyal said. The Minister, who had held a review meeting with seven Railway zones on June 15 and again on Saturday with three Zonal Managers, said the average punctuality of mail/express trains increased from 70 per cent to 85 per cent the very next day.
“I had interacted with the field officers on June 15 and 16 and everybody got down to the task immediately,” Goyal said. He had reviewed with the GMs of the worst-affected zones- Northern Railways, North Central Railway and East Central Railway following which a third line between the Allahabad - Mughalsarai section was sanctioned.
Chairman Railway Board Ashwani lohani held a review meeting regarding all the ongoing and future projects with General Managers of Central Railways and Western Railways in Mumbai. lohani also held discussions with Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation ltd (MRVC) regarding capacity enhancement works under Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP).