Passenger amenities: Railways launch programme to get feedback

Faced with criticism of passenger amenities available onboard trains and in stations, the railways have launched a programme to call travelling passengers randomly on their mobile phone to collect feedback to improve services.

The feedback is being collected about the cleanliness of stations, platforms, trains, quality of catering, level of cooling of AC, quality of food, punctuality of trains and quality of bedrolls.
"On an average 60-70 calls per day per train are being made and efforts are on to make approximately one lakh successful calls per day to passengers of mail/express trains. The feedback will help improve passenger amenities and also help fix accountability of service providers," a railway statement said today.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has been entrusted with the exercise and the feedback is being collected through Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).

The passengers have the option of providing the feedback categorising them as 'good', 'satisfactory' and 'unsatisfactory or bad'.

The latest move comes against the backdrop of Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu committing in Parliament and in various others forums to improve amenities in stations and in trains given the persistent criticism faced by the railways over untidy railway premises, lack of amenities in stations and the quality of food served onboard trains