Meet the first TC of Central Railway to have raked in Rs 1 crore in this financial year - Mohammed Shams Chand has brought in Rs 1 crore for CR in 11 months, working diligently to nab ticketless travellers daily, through Covid restrictions and all. He is the first CR ticket checker to join the ‘one-crore club’ after the pandemic.
Chand caught 13,472 ticketless travellers between April 2021 and February 2022 and collected, in all, Rs 1,06,41,105 in fines. ‘Ticketless’ passengers in this context refers to those without a valid ticket for the compartment they are travelling in, and includes, for example, someone travelling in a first-class compartment on a second-class ticket.
Chand is the member of a special batch of ticket examiners, who are authorised to collect fines from passengers on both local and long-distance trains. His tally of 13,472 ticketless passengers works out to 40 a day, assuming he worked 335 days in the current financial year.
To put his achievement in context, consider that the average TC fines eight ticketless passengers a day and collects about Rs 2,000, which works out to Rs 6.3 lakh annually. The salary of a ticket checker is between Rs 50,000 and Rs 60,000 a month, depending on seniority.
Asked where he lives, 41-year-old Chand quips, “In trains. I spend an average of 12 to 13 hours a day on trains.” He joined the CR in 2000 on the sports quota. Until 2012, he was a prominent member of the Central Railway’s hockey team and his favourite position was that of a midfielder. According to him, hockey skills are handy in netting errant passengers. “No doubt, sports increases our stamina, which proves helpful in our job when it comes to reading the minds of ticketless travellers.”
So how scary was his job during the Covid pandemic? He recalls, “It was a great opportunity to serve people but at the same time, it was very scary. As we were in direct contact with passengers, the risk was very high. I was more worried about my family and that they could be exposed to Covid. I used to follow all the precautions to keep myself and my family safe, but there was always a worry.”
Asked about the challenges of being a ticket checker he says, “We have to face new challenges daily. Every passenger is different, reacting in their own way when caught by the TC. Some are softspoken, many are aggressive and some are ready to pay. Making the passenger realise their fault and counselling them is a big challenge. In conclusion, each day we have to deal with people whose behaviour is unknown to us. Accordingly, studying passenger behaviour and psychology seconds after they are caught and dealing with them accordingly is a big challenge for a ticket checker,”
“For Central Railways, it is a double bonanza, as it has also become the highest ticket-checking revenue-earner among all zonal railways across India,” said a CR official, adding that its other ticket checkers had also performed their task well.
