“I had travelled by about half-a-dozen trains by 2 AC and 3 AC coaches during the last two months and the common thing I found in all these trains was the lack of Railway Protection Force (RPF) constables even during night journeys,” says Kanchumurthy Eswar, secretary, Duvvada Railway Users’ Association.
These include: from Secunderabad to Shirdi by 17064 (Ajanta Express) on February 23 in the 3 AC coach and return by 18504 Sai Nagar Shirdi to Duvvada by 3 AC on February 26. Train no. 22643 Patna Express from Visakhapatnam to Asansol by 2 AC on March 2 and returned by 3 AC on March 16. “The non-availability of RPF personnel even on long journey night journey trains is distressing. Passengers, especially women and senior citizens, are afraid to travel in night trains due to this.
The telephone numbers of RPF constables on duty should also be displayed in the coaches so that passengers need not run from coach to coach looking for them,” Mr. Eswar wrote to the Ministry of Railways, which had sought suggestions from passengers on RPF corruption.
“I travelled by the 3 AC coach in the 22802 Chennai – Visakhapatnam Express, which arrived in Visakhapatnam at 11.40 a.m. on Sunday. When I boarded the coach, the AC was not working. My co-passengers thought that the AC would be switched on after the train started. I tweeted about the problem and an attendant came after a few hours (near Gudur) and switched on the AC,” says Aditya of Chennai.
“The train moved at a snail’s pace at NAD Junction and many of the passengers alighted. It reached the Kancharapalem outer signal around 7.15 a.m. Some of the passengers alighted there. At 11.29 a.m., I too alighted to save my time by catching an autorickshaw at the road point.”
“I immediately checked the running status of the train on my mobile and to my surprise I found that the railways had shown that the actual/expected arrival of the train at Visakhapatnam as 11.19 a.m. (with a delay of 19 minutes), even as it was at the outer signal,” he said. It was shown in the same screen below that the train departed Gopalapatnam at 11.06 a.m. and it was only 6 km to go.
Reporting By B. Madhu Gopal
