Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today flagged off an inaugural time-tabled container train named 'Cargo Express' between Domestic Container Terminal (Okhla) here and Bengaluru.
The Ministry also launched an integrated social media platform (Facebook and Twitter) for redressal of grievances, a policy allowing differently-abled persons to avail concessions while traveling alone and liberalised 'Comprehensive Parcel Leasing Policy' (CLIP).
"Typically, (people would earlier keep guessing) when will the goods train reach... You required an astrologer and needed to be lucky... Now we are sure it will reach in particular time.
"We are taking responsibility and this is going to reduce the turn around time by almost half," Prabhu said during the event held at Rail Bhawan where he launched the service via video conferencing.
Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha was also present during the event.
Following budgetary announcements in this regard, Railways held consultations with Container Train Operators and accordingly, two pairs of time-tabled trains have been proposed by Container Corporation of India (Concor) to start with between Delhi-Bengaluru (2,278 km) and Delhi-Chennai (2,160 km).
The transit time for both the services is of 70 hours on each side.
"A wide range of domestic piecemeal traffic is targeted for movement between these two pairs (terminals), notable among which are steel tubes, food grains, ceramic tiles, polished granite slabs, rubber latex, plywood boards, alloys, electronic goods, chemicals, cars and automobile spares," an official statement said.
Noting that the Railways gets two-third of its income from freight services, it will need to keep finding new sources of revenue in view of the competition it faces from road, air and other means of transports.
"Parcel is one of the growing businesses in the country. We have to work on that. If people are not coming to us, we will have to study why they are not coming to us," he said.
The Railways, which already has more than 10 lakh followers on Twitter, will entertain grievances on Facebook too for "speedy resolution of issues". Prabhu also made functional the Integrated Social Media platform from today for the posts received on Facebook and Twitter.
Any passenger or rail user can now post their grievance or suggestions or assistance on the Facebook page 'Ministry of Railways - India'.
The Ministry has devised a system to analyse the Facebook
posts and forward the same internally to Divisional Railways Manager (DRM) concerned by the social media cell at Railway Board. Action taken by the DRM will be posted on the same page.
"I am very proud to say, this is a very, very unique system considering the magnitude, complexity, considering real on time addressal of the issues," Prabhu said.
He also announced a policy allowing divyang passengers (differently-abled persons from orthopaedically handicapped/paraplegic persons/mentally retarded) to avail concession in fare while travelling alone.
At present, concessional tickets are not issued to eligible divyang if not accompanied by an escort.
According to the statement, orthopaedically handicapped/paraplegic and mentally retarded persons who cannot travel without escort and blind persons travelling alone
or with an escort - for any purpose - will get 75 per cent concession in second, sleeper first, AC chair car and AC 3 Tier.
They will get 50 per cent in first class and AC 2-tier, 25 per cent in AC 3-tier and AC Chair Car of Rajdhani/Shatabdi trains. They will also be eligible for 50 per cent concession in monthly and quarterly season tickets.
Deaf and mute persons (both afflictions together in the same person) travelling alone or with an escort will get 50
per cent concession in second, sleeper and first class. They will get 50 per cent concession in monthly and quarterly season tickets.
One escort is also eligible for the same element of concession in respective categories, the statement said.
In its bid to make CLIP "Customer-friendly", the Ministry also announced changes in the policy such as increasing duration of parcel leasing scheme from three years to five years.
The Ministry also announced changes in Parcel Cargo Express Trains (PCET), including increasing duration of contract from three to six years.
