The general manager of Southern Railway on Thursday informed the Madras High Court that Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineers (SDMEs) of Chennai, Tiruchi, Madurai, Tiruvananthapuram, Palghat and Salem divisions have been asked to ensure that the train coaches are clean.

In a compliance report filed before Justice S.M. Subramaniam, the general manager, R.K. Kulshrestha, said he had advised the Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer/Coaching (Dy.CME/Chg) to issue the instructions and accordingly, a circular was issued to the SDMEs on November 9 along with a compendium on maintenance of coaches.

The GM also assured the court that any failure, lapses, negligence or dereliction of duty on the part of the officials or employees in maintaining the coaches neat and clean would be viewed seriously and suitable departmental and disciplinary proceeding would be initiated under the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules of 1968.

The report, filed through standing counsel P.T. Ramkumar, pointed out that Southern Railway consisted of six divisions covering a distance of 5,081 km and 735 railway stations. An average of 1,305 trains were operated every day serving more than 23 lakh passengers.

In order to provide better services to passengers, Southern Railway had already put in place a mechanism to redress complaints and grievances related to cleanliness, catering and security. A dedicated 24-hour toll free phone number, 138, was in operation to receive all kinds of complaints including cleanliness, water requirement and electrical repairs.

‘Coach Mitra’

Apart from it, passengers could send complaints by way of text messages to the mobile number 9821736069, introduced under the scheme ‘Coach Mitra.’ The scheme had been formulated in such a way that every message was forwarded to the official in-charge of redressing the complaint and informing the complainant about the action taken.

There were also two more toll free numbers 189 and 1800111321 to redress grievances and complaints that were related to catering service alone and they would be attended by the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation. Further, security issues could be sorted with the help of Railway Protection Force by dialling 182.

Complaints could also be lodged through the web portal coms.indianrailways.gov.in or pgportal.gov.in which was a centralised public grievance redress and monitoring system operated by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. Passengers could also tweet their complaints to the Railway Ministry, the report stated.

Stating that the toll free numbers had already been displayed in all coaches in trains and railway stations, the general manager said they would be put up in bold letters soon in order to ensure more visibility.