Railways may use Civil Lines space of stn for screening of passengers

Ludhiana: In a attempt to overcome the issues of crowd management of migrant workers who are returning to the city in passenger trains, the railway authorities are planning to bring to use the space on Civil Lines side of the Ludhiana railway station for conducting their screening and verification of passengers before giving them permission to entry the city limits. This will help the railways to solve the issue of gathering of huge rush of passengers on one side of the station.
With this, local railway officials will easily implement social distancing norm among passengers easily as earlier they were made to stand in long queues while waiting for turn to come up for medical screening process.
Northern Railway authorities are of the view that if the ministry resumes long route trains in the next 15 days, then local railway officials will have to make the use of the vacant space near the Civil Lines to manage work of medical screening and verification of every single passenger returning to city.
Apart from that the railway authorities have given directions to the local railway security force to coordinate with local ticket checking staff to ensure proper implementation of safety norms among passengers waiting for their train on the station premises.
The ticket checking staff has been asked to share local passenger’s data with the district health department team for early management of the work of conducting medical screening of all passengers and ensure that no passengers leave the station without undergoing the medical test before entering the city limits. The railway has made all CCTVs cameras functional to keep check on the movement of passengers.
Railway authorities have also asked the district health authorities to increase the number of health officials for conducting screening of large numbers of migrant workers because heavy rush of migrant labourers is likely to appear at the city railway station in the next few days as festival season is around the corner.
Tarun Kumar, Ludhiana railway station director, said, “We are working on the development plan to make use of the vacant space near Civil Lines for medical screening of passengers returning to city in the next few days. The local railway authorities are waiting for railway ministry order on the resumption of several long route trains from second week of August.”