For the exclusive assistance of women passengers, Southern Railway is starting exclusive all women facilitation centres in all major stations. Thiruvananthapuram Central station and Kozhikode in Kerala will have one from November 1 which is exclusively run by women Railway officials including RPF. With this, Southern Railway would now has a total of seven such centers across Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
This new initiative of Southern Railway, which is the first of its kind on Indian Railways, provides a place for woman passengers to seek travel related assistance and is manned round the clock by women staff from the Commercial and the Railway Protection Force departments.
The purpose is to provide all type of assistance to women passengers by senior railway women officials addressing primarily all their needs of security and information. In addition to the All Woman Facilitation Centers, Baby Feeding Centers, where nursing mothers are given the necessary privacy to take care of their infants, have also been opened in these stations.
At Trivandrum Central Station, the assistance booth will work 24 hrs and is situated near the new booking office. The specialty of the assistance booth is that there will be a lactating room for feeding mothers. Additional facilities are wheelchairs, easy service of coolie porters ,accessibility to prepaid auto/taxi etc.
They will have a 24 hrs. help line number 9567869385 exclusively for women. This is in addition to the toll free helpline number 138 & 182 of Railways.All the women passengers any where in Trivandrum division which spans from Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari to Shornur may make use of the helpline number in case of any emergency.