Madurai Railway Division has planned to eliminate all unmanned level crossings in a phased manner to increase safety in rail operation, said Divisional Railway Manager, A.K. Rastogi.
Appreciating the officials and employees of the division for bagging the inter-divisional Safety shield for safe operations of trains, he said the number of accidents had been reduced to four from six reported last year.
Mr. Rastogi was addressing at the 58 Railway Week Celebrations here on Monday. He said that the division was in the process of eliminating all the unmanned level crossings either by providing limited use subways (LUS) or diversion of road traffic after closing the gates nearby.
Safety campaigns on crossing unmanned level crossings were being done at schools, villages, Regional Transport Offices. He distributed cash awards with merit certificates to 314 employees including group awards for their meritorious service.
Seventeen rolling shields were given away to field units and offices for best maintenance on various categories.
Mr. Rastogi said that the division was able to achieve punctuality of 95.1 per cent for passenger trains and 94.1 per cent for Mail / Express trains.
Provision of six escalators in Madurai railway junction would be completed shortly. Similarly, the work for erecting escalator at Tirunelveli railway station would start soon, he added.
Additional Divisional Railway Manager, V. Ajithkumar, Divisional Personnel Officer, Chandrika Jayasankar, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, Govindappa Raj, were among those present.
