“Safety is priority and if we have to provide world-class travel experience to our customers, we have to improve our infrastructure. It has been going on for the last four years under the present government and will be taken forward. Plans are also in place to speed up the passenger and freight trains,” said the new chairman of Railway Board (CRB), Vinod Kumar Yadav.
Soon after taking charge as CRB at Rail Nilayam on Monday before he flew to Delhi, Mr. Yadav in an informal interaction with newspersons said, “The vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to bring world-class standards in railway travel through capacity enhancement and improving amenities. We are working in that direction,” he said.
After a two-year stint at South Central Railway as general manager, it was an emotional as well as a joyous moment for him on New Year’s Day which coincided with his birthday. He also had the unique distinction of being the first SCR GM to be posted as CRB, which does not happen too often in the Indian Railways.
The CRB said efforts in the last four years have been to provide safe and comfortable travel to the passengers along with special focus on infrastructure development with sufficient funds being given for doubling, tripling, signalling systems and the like.
Thanking the government for reposing faith in him for the top post in Indian railways, Mr. Yadav said there was a lot of effort is being put into introducing high speed, semi-speed trains and bringing dedicated freight corridors into service. The bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad too would be expedited.
Pointing out that the railways has a workforce of about 13 lakh, he affirmed that more steps would be taken towards retraining and reorienting the 13-lakh-strong staff besides taking care of their welfare.
Later, he addressed principal heads of departments and divisional railway managers of Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur, Guntakal and Nanded through video conference where he called upon them to hold a positive mindset, believe in themselves and focus on teamwork to achieve success.