Ujjain : Manoj Sharma, Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), who was on inspection visit to the city railway station, lashed out on media persons for covering discrepancies, here Thursday.
The officer even reached out to snatch the mobile phones of a media person who was clicking pictures of the whole scenario. Sharma in his strict words reprimanded the press men…who are you to click pictures… it is our private matter. Issue of bad food quality and service was raised by the running staff and locomotive pilots at the locomotive staff running house, when Sharma reached there, to take stock of the situations. As soon as the official arrived with his team, the some railway staffers approached him with food platters and showed him the quality of food provided to them, by the local staff.
One staffer said, sahib meri train has 1.10 par hai… aur abhi tak khana nahi bana hai… kitchen me gas cylinder khatam ho gaya hai. They even informed that most of the time what they get to eat is only rice and dal, veggies are seldom sight. During all this the media team started to click pictures, over which the DRM lost his cool and tried to snatch the mobile phone of one press man, saying it is our internal matter, who are you to be present here. Further the running staff informed that the food quality is bad and the local staff has a bad demeanour. They said please do not publish our names, or it would be trouble for us.
DRM inspects Simhastha works at railway station
The DRM inspected the Simhastha related expansion and development works at the city railway station for around 2 hours. He said the railways has prepared big for the Simhastha fair. He said a total of 4 new Foot over Bridges (FOB) of extra wide design are under construction by the railways to accommodate the increased crowd. Out of 4 FOBs two are regular and have been constructed in parallel of existing ones and two are out to out FOBs to take a passenger directly to the exit, in case a passenger moves into a wrong lane or side. He said 4 lifts will also be soon installed at the station to ease the elderly and ease the pressure on FOBs. He said 100 additional CCTV cameras will be installed for increased vigil with deployment of 1200 extra RPF personnel during the mela duration, to enhance security. Sharma said for crowd management the routing will be done so as their will be no cross movement of the crowd and platforms will be route dedicated, so no sudden crowd movements will occur. He said hundred pairs of extra trains, with halt stations on each direction of junction, are under construction to ease the crowd pressure.
Magic-autos wrecking chaos at the rly stn gates
Taxi drivers are virtually ruling over the city railway station and most of the time the entry gates to the station are kept blockaded by them. The scenario was no different on Thursday, during the visit of DRM. Scores of Railway Police Force personnel who were on duty for the visit of the DRM even failed to remove these quarrelling taxi operators, who kept blocking the entry gate repeatedly. The visitors and passengers to the station were in turn harassed, for the entry to the station, as they kept honking and arguing with these taxi drivers. Even though the prepaid auto taxi booth is present, but it is also of less use. There have been instances of taxi drivers charging sky rocketing prices and this facility was expected to give some relief to the commuters. But, when Free Press spent about three hours conducting a reality check, the revelations were disappointing. In spite of the pre-paid booth, taxi drivers did not shy away from demanding exorbitant fares. Further the local traffic police also fail to check on these errant drivers, who were sitting a few meters away at the Dewasgate.
