CHENNAI: The State government has a 50 per cent stake in the MRTS, but when it comes to the task of maintaining the MRTS stations, Southern Railway is forced do it single handedly.
The massive structures for MRTS stations were constructed looking far ahead into the future, but the railways find this future too far and the maintenance of it too expensive.
S K Kulshrestha, Divisional Railway Manager, Chennai Division, told Express that the railways has taken up the task of improving the maintenance of the MRTS stations. “The maintenance of these stations requires huge amounts and the MRTS has not generated that kind of profits to meet the expenditure, he said and added that as the initial step the railway was into the process of restoring the damaged lifts and escalators.
T Archunan, Senior Divisional Engineer, Southern Railway said, “After the MRTS hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons we started a revamping process. All the lifts and escalators except at two or three have been restored to working condition. We are also into the process of commissioning toilets and making available drinking water in all MRTS stations,” he added.
He said that as the escalators were of German make, it took time to procure the required spare parts from Germany. All equipment that had gone into the making of MRTS was of the finest quality, but unfortunately the security system there couldn’t tackle theft.
“To put in a fool-proof security we need more manpower, which translates into another huge expenditure, he said. There is no dearth of plans. The Government Railway Police had claimed that it has put forward a proposal for providing a security blanket to the MRTS stations. “But all these enthusiasm dies down once the question of funding is raised,” said Kulshrestha. Again, the State government keeps mum. It might have spent lots of money on the MRTS project.