Gowda to railway staff: Go beyond conventional thinking to achieve results

Railways Minister Sadananda Gowda on Thursday urged all railwaymen to be more innovative and to find solutions for issues like efficiency, punctuality, cleanliness and services on the Indian Railways.

Addressing a conference of general managers, divisional railway managers, chiefs of railway production units and railway PSUs, besides other senior railway officials here today, Gowda said that conventional thinking and the present style of functioning will not help achieve anything.

"Normally, the tendency is to come out with replies and excuses for non-performance which will not be tolerated by the government," Gowda warned.

Expressing his concern on matters such as the safety and security of women and elderly passengers as well as the poor standard of passenger amenities, Gowda said all have to make efforts to make the railways efficient and passenger-oriented.

He said that it is a matter of concern that though the Indian Railways carry the largest number of passengers and freight, they are far behind in terms of efficiency, punctuality, cleanliness and services.

He cited the example of the Chinese Railways, which is four times more efficient than the Indian Railways, both in terms of number of passengers carried per employee and the freight carried per employee.

The minister pointed out that there are lots of complaints from the travelling public.

"We need to redress them and make efforts so that the complaints are reduced or eliminated. The railways will have to constantly endeavour to find solutions for meeting the ever increasing demands for the introduction of more trains and new lines," Gowda said.

Railway Board Chairman Arunendra Kumar said that there is a wind of change in the governance and we need to gear up to improve our work culture.

He pointed out that it was an unique opportunity in the history of railways that the Railway Ministers are directly interacting with the ground level officers who are at the cutting edge of railway system with a view to improve delivery of service.

The Financial Commissioner, Railways, Rashim Kapoor,. Member Engineering, V.K.Gupta, Member Electrical, Kul Bhushan, Member Traffic, D.P. Pande, Member Mechanical, Alok Johri and Member Staff, A.K.Mital and Secretary, Railway Board, P.C. Gajbhiye, were among the others present.