South Central Railway General Manager Ravindra Gupta on Monday directed the six Divisional Railway Managers across the zone to closely monitor punctuality of trains and improve performance, apart from reviewing the division-wise position of safety records.
He evaluated unsafe incidents of a minor nature and issued guidelines so that they could be avoided, also advising regular conduct of safety inspections to educate personnel involved in train operations. He took stock of instances that led to a loss in punctuality and suggested the measures and plans needed to avoid the same. He wanted all divisions to follow up on train movement and wanted them to maintain the punctuality ratio of SCR was above 96 per cent, the Indian Railways average.
Mr. Gupta undertook a detailed review of safety and punctuality on the zone, with principal heads of departments and DRMs of Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur, Guntakal and Nanded on the video conference mode. Asking DRMs to take up special cleanliness drives, Mr. Gupta also instructed them to focus on setting up of water recycling plants, dig rain water harvesting pits to improve the groundwater table and plan massive afforestation, ahead of June 5, the World Environment Day.
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Two Express trains have been provided additional stoppages for six months on an experimental basis. No. 17211/17212 Machilipatnam-Yesvantpur-Machilipatnam Express will stop for two minutes at Penukonda on the Hindupur-Sri Satya Sai Prasanti Nilayam section at 6.19 a.m. and 4.59 p.m., respectively. No. 16534/16533 Bengaluru City-Bagat ki Koti-Bengaluru City Express will halt at Hinduput on the Yesvantpur-Dharmavaram section at 6.38 p.m. and 2.18 a.m., respectively. Similarly, an additional air-conditioned III tier coach will be attached to Nos. 17207/17208 Vijayawada-Shirdi Sai Nagar weekly express, a press release said.