HYDERABAD: It is probably not a mind-boggling thing to see people just waltzing into any railway station in the State without bothering to get their baggage checked; in fact, some people don’t even realise that metal detectors exist for a reason and make sure they bypass it somehow. Perhaps, the sight is not mind-boggling enough primarily because the security personnel guarding the entrance don’t raise objections when people bypass the scanners.
Admitting that there is an urgent need for 100 scanners, the South Central Railway (SCR) general manager Vinod Kumar Yadav said that the scanning equipment have been primarily placed to create a psychological effect on people who enter the station by alerting them that they are being monitored.
He said that the entrance and exit mechanism of railways stations don’t work the same way as airports that have separate entry and exit points. Owing to the presence of border-less tracks, he pointed out that it is difficult to get people to enter and exit stations using the allotted points. He added that it would take highly efficient technical equipments to contain this sort of unchecked entry.
When asked about the dacoity gang that tampered with the signal system to stop the Yeshwanthpur-Kachiguda Express train at Divitipally, Mahbubnagar, Yadav said that a similar modus operandi have been employed in Karnataka and other regions by the same gang for their robberies and that they make it a point to move from place to place when security gets beefed up in one particular zone.
In an attempt to improve security at the stations, Railway Protection Force and Government Railway Police personnel have been deployed on escort duty at all the identified express trains on a regular basis which has led to the considerable reduction of thefts in trains. CCTV surveillance cameras have been installed at 41 stations in the SCR zone and integrated security system has been introduced at three stations, namely, Secunderabad, Hyderabad and Tirupati. He said that many cases have been cracked wide open with the help of CCTV cameras.
Bid adieu to terrible railway food
Most passengers travelling on trains avoid buying food from railway canteens due to legitimate concerns of quality. Stating that the problem requires intervention at the policy level, he said, “IRCTC is setting up base kitchens to supply food across stations. What is special about these kitchens is that some of them are even equipped with CCTV cameras which live-stream videos of the cooking process. This way, workers will have to keep cleanliness and safety in mind.”
Stations to meet world-class standards
Now that the Habibganj station in Madhya Pradesh is being developed in lines of Germany’s Heidelberg Railway Station, Yadav said that within the South Central Railway Limits, Tirupati and Nellore stations would soon fit world-class standards. These stations will have separate levels for departures and arrivals. In addition to this, they will have hotels, food plazas, shopping complexes and other facilities.
Manual scavenging to be fully eliminated
Admitting that manual scavenging is a social evil that continues to be a reality, Yadav has assured that the practice of it will be eliminated by March 2019. He added that as of now 70 per cent of coaches have been equipped with bio-toilets. As soon as the rest of the coaches get equipped with the same, the degrading practice of cleaning human waste that pile up on tracks will end, and with it, the unbearable stench that we often subconsciously relate with railway stations.