The Hindu : National : Railways to launch call centres

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Wednesday, Mar 16, 2005

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National

Railways to launch call centres

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15. The Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, today announced in the Lok Sabha the launching of call centres under public-private partnership to provide faster and updated information on rail services. He conceded some demands of MPs from Kerala, including dropping a proposal to extend the Kerala Express between Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi to Chandigarh.

Participating in a marathon debate on the 2005-06 Rail budget with 187 other members, Mr. Prasad also announced several new services for South India.

Pacifying members

The House later passed the vote on account for two months and gave its nod to the Supplementary Demands for Grants of over Rs. 2,750 crores and relevant appropriation bills.

Mr. Prasad declared that the Kerala Express — 2625/2626 — between Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi would not be extended to Chandigarh as announced earlier in the budget. Instead, the Kerala Sampark Kranti Express, which is scheduled to start its operations this month, would be extended to Chandigarh to meet the demand of the people of Punjab and Haryana.

Trying to pacify agitated members from the South, particularly Kerala, Mr. Prasad during his 25-minute reply said that a weekly service would be started between Ernakulum and Bangalore and that the frequency of the Trivandrum-Mangalore-Maveli Express would be increased to thrice-a-week from the current bi-weekly one.

Mr. Prasad said the Quilon-Punaloor gauge conversion will be completed during 2005-06, and that the 50 km-long new track doubling work would be undertaken in addition to such work between Ernakulam and Kottayam via Kayamkulam.

Five new rail over-bridges would be established in Kerala, he said, besides the 52 on which work was in progress.

Humanitarian gesture

As a humanitarian gesture, Mr. Prasad announced that the Railways would not charge any fare from a person carrying the body of a patient who died in a government hospital after treatment.

He also proposed a new mail express train between Kanpur and Mumbai.

Talking about call centres for faster updated information on rail services, Mr. Prasad said private partners would have to bear the cost of setting them up and running them. Mr. Prasad said this would be done through the open tender system and a part of the income generated would go to the Railways. BSNL has been providing 15 paise per call to RailTel in Bihar, he added.

When Mr. Prasad rose to speak, the BJP-led Opposition staged a walkout, calling him a "tainted minister". Asserting that rail safety and security were issues of top-most priority, Mr. Prasad said several steps for improving them had been taken. He rejected the charge of regional discrimination, saying no special treatment has been given to any particular area and discounted the apprehension that the Railways' modernisation process was suffering for lack of funds.

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