BENGALURU: After years of passengers repeatedly falling down and suffering injuries on platform one of the Cantonment railway station when alighting from trains due to its low height, work on raising the platform height is now going on round-the-clock after Railways settled payments with the contractor. The Bengaluru Railway Division had finally initiated steps to redress the issue by August last year, however, the contractor assigned to carry out the job stopped work midway over a payment tussle and passengers faced problems when alighting here.
The contract to raise the height of the platform by over 30 centimetres was given to a private agency for nearly `40 lakh. The platform is to be extended for a length of 500 metres. Concreting and granite laying work had to be done. “Work began in August 2017 and continued till September. The contractor submitted intermittent bills for clearance.
With Railways delaying the clearing of bills, he asked his staff to stop the work completely. Everything was in limbo for three months,” a top railway official told The New Indian Express. Passengers then began facing a new kind of problem from October till mid-January of 2018 as they had to walk from the halfdone elevated platform to a lower plane when they entered the concourse area to exit the station. “Many people fell down, particularly senior citizens.
The complaint log book in the possession of the Station Manager too has a few complaints registered,” explains a Railway Protection Force cop stationed here. “Work has now begun and will be completed within three months,” another official said. “Work on the 200-metre stretch where the stalls, the waiting room and other passenger amenities are available will be completed within 10 days,” he said.
The concreting has been done and granite laying work is on at a rapid pace here now. In the portions on both sides beyond this stretch, only concreting would be taken up, he added. Nearly 40 trains (number varies each day due to bi-weekly and tri-weekly trains) stop at this platform daily. This includes the Chennai-Bengaluru Shatabdi, Karnataka Express to New Delhi, Kacheguda Express and the Mumbai-bound Kurla Express.