Rail complaints chug down by 40 pc

More and more people appear to be finding fewer reasons to complain on trains and at railway stations in Delhi, claims the latest figures issued by Northern Railway. HT Correspondent reports.

More and more people appear to be finding fewer reasons to complain on trains and at railway stations in Delhi, claims the latest figures issued by Northern Railway.

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There has been a 40 per cent decrease in the number of complaints from passengers regarding cleanliness, railway staff behaviour and other passenger amenities, when compared with the figures of same time last year.

“We have taken many initiatives to improve amenities. The figures show that they are working,” said Northern Railway General Manager Vivek Sahai.

“But the number of complaints can be further reduced. And that is our current aim.”

Nineteen new teams of officials, called the Service Improvement Groups have been formed which will inspect various passenger amenities, cleanliness and sanitation, etc. and submit their report to Divisional and Zonal Headquarters.

Cutting through red tape and protocol, Sahai interacted directly with the station managers 85 big and medium stations of Northern Railway over the weekend to solve hurdles in the way of better and prompt services at stations.

“One of the issues that emerged at the meet was that it took a lot of time to get the sanction to spend even meagre amounts of money for sundry station upkeep jobs,” said a senior railway official.

This was the second such instance when Northern railway did away with bureaucratic hurdles in the way of seamless services. Last year, it published mobile phone numbers of all its top officials for passengers to call and complain directly.