Following the huge rush of passengers during the ongoing festive period, the Eastern Railway has directed all the divisional railway managers to depute branch officers round the clock to provide all kinds of assistance to the passengers and meet any kind of exigency. A high-level meeting headed by the general manager of the Eastern Railway, Amar Prakash Dwivedi, with the principal heads of departments and DRMS was held today.
The GM is said to have asked all the principal heads of departments to personally visit different strategic stations over Eastern Railway like Asansol, Malda, Jasidih, Bhagalpur, Dum Dum to assess existing crowd control measures and implement further improvements, if required. Mr Dwivedi, also directed to depute civil defence personnel along with the Railway Protection Force along with other steps. The zonal railway also decided to strictly prohibit photography and videography to avoid unnecessary crowding at platforms.
Advertisement
Later, the GM conducted inspections of Howrah, Sealdah and Kolkata stations to ascertain the arrangements for proper crowd management during the festive season. According to the chief public relations officer of the Eastern Railway, Kausik Mitra, the zonal railway has adopted a comprehensive approach to crowd management during the festive period.
To cater to the increased passenger demand, Eastern Railway opened 42 unreserved ticket counters across Howrah and Sealdah divisions. Additionally, reservation counters for festive bookings remained open even during holidays.
To ensure crowd management and passenger safety, the railway authorities implemented increased patrols, set up information desks, deployed emergency medical assistance teams, enhanced CCTV surveillance, ‘May I Help You’ booths operational at key stations, fire safety measures, including the deployment of sniffer dogs trained to detect inflammable items.