For over 30 hours, Kishan Singh has been huddled along with his colleagues at the concourse of Chennai Central railway station. A group of workers engaged by a contractor of the ongoing Chennai Metro Rail project, they had planned their vacation – a trip to their native villages in Satna, Madhya Pradesh over a month ago.
“We reached the station at 5 p.m. yesterday (on Monday) to board the Ganga Kavery Express. We heard the announcement that it was delayed. We did not go back to site last night as there was no power. It is better here,” said Mr. Singh. The group of five men said they had managed to have lunch on Tuesday, but are hopeful of boarding their train that has been delayed by several hours.
Families, students, devotees to Sabarimala continue to wait patiently for their train to arrive anytime at the Central station. There is just about enough power supply at the station to keep the lights switched on. The LED display boards and even the public address systems were not functioning by Tuesday evening.
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A huge crowd surrounded the passenger information centre and railway policemen had a tough time to maintain order, while department staff could not manage to respond to the queries of all the anxious passengers.
The pay and use toilets were shut down by staff maintaining them as there was no water supply. “We had to lock it. There was no other option,” a woman staff member said. There was no power supply and hence the toilets had run out of water. They assured passengers that water supply would be back soon and asked them to be patient.
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Southern Railway arranged for buses to help stranded passengers at Chengalpattu, Ambur and Sholingur on Monday evening. They served tea, snacks, upma and vegetable rice to the passengers, with help from passengers’ associations in the respective towns, officials said.