Railway Board Chief Calls For Higher Efficiency

HYDERABAD: Chairman of Railway Board chairman AK Mittal held a high-level board meeting with the general managers of five zones at Rail Nilayam in Secunderabad on Friday to discuss plans for raising the efficiency and growth of the railways.

The five zones are East Coast Railway, Southern Railway, South Central Railway, South Eastern Central Railway and South Western Railway. The full board meeting was held to review the performance of the five zones during the current fiscal and deliberate on the developmental plans for attaining the targets by the end of the financial year.

Board members Navin Tandon (Electrical), VK Gupta (Engg), Hemant Kumar (Mechanical), Pradeep Kumar (Staff), Kundan Sinha (Traffic), secretary Ganga Ram Agarwal and finance commissioner Rajalakshmi Ravikumar participated in the meeting.

General managers PK Saxena (SCR & SWR), Rajiv Vishnoi (ECoR), Vashishta Johri (SR) and Satyender Kumar (ECR), along with divisional railway managers and other senior officials representing the zones alos attended the meeting.

Addressing the meeting, Mittal sought the best in terms of working efficiency from all the zones in various spheres of performance so as to ensure the targeted growth in freight and passenger traffic besides giving due priority to customer satisfaction.

“With a fresh growth-oriented direction coming from railway minister Suresh Prabhu, the need is to evolve a dynamic approach and infuse fresh ideas into the working system,” he said and called for every effort to improve the loading, mobility and interchange performance and timely release of rakes. The key to success in increasing the passenger traffic is by means of effective ticket checking. He also laid emphasis on ‘Zero Accident Mission’ as emphasised by railway minister.

Speaking on capacity enhancement in terms of projects taken up for completion, Mittal made it clear that there should be no time or cost overrun for such works. Elaborating on the expectations of rail users, he held focus on the aspect of punctuality and cleanliness as the two foremost factors which are vital to passenger satisfaction.