Railways begins collecting passenger feedback on basic amenities

With a view to improving passenger amenities in running trains and stations, Indian Railways has started collecting feedback from the public about basic amenities available to them.

Feedback collection is in line with Railways Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu's emphasis on establishing a strong connect between the railway administration and railway users, said an official release.

The job of collecting this significant feedback, which began this month, has been entrusted with its own PSU — Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). The feedback is being collected by IRCTC through an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) with the number +91-139.

Under this system, travelling passengers are being contacted randomly on their mobile phones to gather feedback about the facilities provided by the Railways in six areas, namely, cleanliness of station/ platform/ train, quality of catering, level of cooling of AC, quality of food, punctuality of trains, and quality of bedrolls.

Of the six facilities, a passenger is asked to send his/ her feedback on only two facilities. They are given three options on their mobile – press 2 (two) for Good, 1(one) for Satisfactory and 0(zero) for unsatisfactory/Bad – with regard to a particular amenity.

Earlier, IRCTC had said 60-70 calls were being made each day on each train and efforts were on to make approximately one lakh successful calls daily to passengers of mail-express trains. The feedback would help improve passenger amenities and also help fix accountability of service providers.

Indian Railways operate 1,200-1,500 mail/ express trains daily. “We plan to make 60-70 calls per day per train. Our target is to make one lakh successful calls to get passenger feedback,” Dr AK Manocha, said in the release.

On getting passenger feedback, IRCTC would immediately contact the service providers so that “remedial action is taken immediately, if possible, or as soon as possible,” he said.

“It is a pioneering initiative that has been handed over to IRCTC by Indian Railways,” the CMD said, adding: “It would greatly benefit the travelling passengers. It will also inject transparency and objectivity in assessment of the functioning of service providers and also fix accountability on them if they fail to provide quality services.”

IRCTC, a ‘mini ratna’ PSU of Indian Railways, will not make calls under the passenger feedback system from 9am to 9pm to avoid inconvenience to the travelling passengers. “Through this feedback system, we hope to substantially improve passenger amenities in running trains as also at stations,” he noted.