Venkatadri Express which started from Kacheguda towards Chittoor on Wednesday evening became the first train across South Central Railway (SCR) to have a ‘Train Captain’. The next ‘captain’ in the zone to coordinate on board services will be on Telangana Express starting on Thursday morning from Hyderabad to New Delhi.
At least one train in each of the six divisions of the zone will be having the new concept of a ‘Train Captain’ who will be overall in charge of the train as decided by the Railway Board recently.
It is a step towards enhanced customer connect, said General Manager Vinod Kumar Yadav on Wednesday.
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The service is being started all over the country as the Railways Ministry has realised that it needed a single point contact person for the passengers. It was initially tested in the Southern Railway.
The ‘Captain’ will be sporting a badge and his name and mobile number will be made available for the passengers so that he can be directly contacted for any train related issue like a deficiency of service or any complaint during the course of the journey. The captaincy is being handed over to the senior-most among the travelling ticket examiner (TTE) in the train from the starting point.
Railways has different people for different roles like the TTE for allotting berths and checking tickets, air-conditioning mechanic, linen in-charge attendant, sanitary staff, security and so on which led to no one being overall in charge of the train, explained the GM.
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Hence, the ‘Captain’ is expected to supervise the work of all these personnel and the staff members of various wings have been instructed to follow his orders during the course of journey to attend to complaints from the passengers. There will also be a change in ‘Captain’ in between the journey for long distance trains, added Mr. Yadav.