Rebooting the Railways | Business Line
Rebooting the Railways | Business Line
The Hindu Business Line, November 25
Letters
Get
on track*
This refers to your editorial “Rebooting
the Railways”(November 24). The gross neglect from the government’s side has
brought disrepute to most of the public sector organisations including
railways. Infrastructure and workforce in Railways get an unsympathetic and raw
deal from both the government and the public who benefit from their services.
When accidents happen or services do not meet expectations, quite often,
employees are blamed and a comparison is drawn to private sector counterparts
or worse still, the ‘excellent’ services available abroad.
Immediate priority for the Railways should
be to improve the existing services better by:
i)
Taking
measures to reduce the number of accidents. Mumbai suburban locals are death
traps which account for scores of daily casualties/fatal injuries. Overload is
the main reason and because of livelihood compulsions, no one complaints. This
issue must be tackled by staggering office hours, increasing services and
providing better and faster alternate arrangements for travel. The Metro or
Mono Rails have not changed the situation much.
ii)
The
victims of accidents should get better medical attention and in case of death,
survivors should get reasonable compensation fast. As there is no proper
identity carried on their persons by passengers, in case of death on the track,
even identification becomes a tough job for the authorities.
iii)
A
proper ongoing audit should ensure that accidents are not caused by obsolete
infrastructure or inefficient men/machines.
iv)
While
introduction of superfast trains spending lakhs of crores need not be objected,
public has a right to demand safety on the existing tracks and additional
investments should not result in the neglect of maintenance of existing services.
M G Warrier,
Mumbai
*A slightly edited version of this response appears under Letters in the print edition of The Hindu Business Line, November 25, 2014
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