As the West Bengal Government and Kolkata Metro Rail authorities are gearing up for the resumption of metro services, a crucial meeting was held between the two sides on Thursday to chalk out preventive measures.
According to sources in the state administration, crowd management came up as the key issue during the meeting. They said Kolkata Police and RPF will be jointly engaged in controlling the crowd inside and outside the metro stations.
Kolkata Metro officials said that while the number of trains running per day will reduced, services may also be suspended on Sundays. As for weekdays, the services will be available from 8 am to 8 pm.
Masks will be mandatory for passengers and there are plans to conduct thermal screening of passengers at the entry point of the stations. Stations and coaches will be sanitised at regular intervals. Once a train enters the platform, only one gate of each compartment will open for convenience of crowd management.
Metro Rail Spokesperson Indrani Mukherjee said that to ensure there are no queues at the ticket counters no tokens will be issued. “We will also not issue any new smart cards,” she said. She also said that markings on seats and on the platforms have already been done for enforcing social distancing norms. “At present, crowd management at the entry points of stations is the key point of discussions,” said Mukherjee.
Sources said that Metro services may resume from the second week of September but no date has been finalised yet.
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