Trivandrum: In his Independence Day speech, Prakash Bhutani, Divisional Railway Manager of Trivandrum Division has reiterated the Division’s commitment to be at the forefront in achieving the Minister for Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu’s, journey of transformation as announced in the Budget this year so as to bring substantial improvement in four focus areas of 1) Passenger Safety, 2) Cleanliness 3) Developmental works and 4) Financial performance.
On the project side, Changanasseri and Chingavanam (9.5 km) are targeted for completion during this year. On the Passenger Amenities front, SR have already spent Rs.34.25 cr so far against the Budget grant of Rs. 74 cr. Water vending machines at Thrissur, Aluva, Ernakulam and Hi speed Wi-fi services at Kollam, lifts & escalators at various stations, improvement on catering, AC paid waiting halls managed by the Government Run Kudumbasree at Thiruvananthapuram Central, Kollam, Ernakulam, Thrissur, etc. are some of the areas which we are actively working on for improvements this year. The process is on to setup Executive lounge and base kitchen at Trivandrum Central with the help of IRCTC. Trivandrum Central and Ernakulam Junction stations have been provided with short-term facilities for the differently-abled with the facility to ramp wheel chairs directly to passenger coaches.
Works are also going on at a good pace between New Aryankavu and Edamann (21 km). To improve our passenger services, during the first four months, Southern Railway (SR) in total has run 947 Special Trains (117% more compared to last year), permanently augmented 13 coaches in 13 trains, 809 extra coaches were temporarily augmented and in all created additional 71,208 berths/seats for the benefit of the passengers. SR have introduced 5 pairs of Mail/Express trains, extended 1 pair of train and speeded up 6 pairs of trains up to July this year. We have achieved punctuality of 85.5% up to July’17 and working on it to improve further, he added.