Railway minister Piyush Goyal reviews performance of three railway zones

PUNE: Railway and coal minister Piyush Goyal reviewed the performance of three Zonal Railways viz North Central Railways, North Eastern Railways and East Central Railways with the General Managers of each zone along with officials of Zonal Railway in Rail Bhavan.

He reiterated that punctuality of the trains needs to be improved without affecting the routine maintenance work related to safety of passengers.

He urged general managers to holistically plan weekly integrated traffic blocks of long duration. During these blocks all maintenance works related to engineering, signal, electrification, bridge, track renewal should take place simultaneously. These planned integrated blocks may be advertised well in advance so that the passengers are well informed about the blocks and any inconvenience to them may be minimized.

Taking slew of decisions to improve punctuality, the minister has instructed that the third line project between Allahabad-Mughalsarai is to be taken on high priority to minimize congestion in Delhi-Mughalsarai route.

Goyal emphasized that if required additional rakes/coaches shall be given to zones to improve punctuality and minimize time loss in case of delayed trains arriving at terminating stations. He stressed on the construction of limited height subways to be strictly monitored and timely executed.

The minister directed that all zonal railways should do root cause analysis based upon passenger feedback to identify the real cause of passenger inconvenience and take the corrective steps.

For real time monitoring, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology should be used in the locomotives. All stations across railways should have separate toilets for men and women with proper lighting, water facility, facility for divyaang and proper cleanliness.

He stressed on the need to provide Point of Sale (PoS) machines in all Mail/ Express trains so that the bill can be given to every customer.

He urged that every coach conductor shall be given a handheld terminal for the optimum occupancy of vacant berth during the journey. He stressed on installation of CCTVs in kitchens of IRCTC so it may be remotely monitored by the concerned officials.