24-hour announcement on Central line by month-end

The Central Railway (CR) has finally woken up to a long-pending grievance of the commuters.

The Central Railway (CR) has finally woken up to a long-pending grievance of the commuters.

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The railway authorities have planned to start 24-hour announcement system on 54 stations falling on the suburban section of CR and also on harbour line by the end of this month.

“The decision was taken after we received several complaints from commuters staying beyond Thane about lack of announcements after 9.30pm,” said a senior Central Railway official on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The CR authorities plan to appoint their own staff as announcers at 24 stations and have outsourced the job to private contractors for the remaining 30.

“We have already trained private announcers for 16 stations, while the others will finish by the end of the week,” the official said, adding that they would soon replace the existing announcers with those from the private company.

The experienced railway announcers would then be transferred to the remaining 24 stations. They will be required to work till 2am, the official said.

The CR will also introduce train indicators in Marathi in the next three months. This is part of the tri-lingual proposal where the indicators would display in three languages — English, Hindi and Marathi.