In its endeavour to provide adequate amenities to passengers at Railway stations, including those for Divyangjan, easy movement of elderly, sick and differently-abled passengers and for smooth access to platforms of major railway stations and ease of movement, escalators and lifts are being provided as part of ‘Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan’, official sources said in Delhi.
Railways has more than 8,700 stations and provision of facilities for Persons with Disabilities are to be provided at all stations based on the needs of travelling public and availability of funds.
In order to provide better accessibility to Divyangjan, Short Term Facilities and Long Terms facilities have been planned at all stations, beginning with Non Suburban Group ‘NSG 1’, ‘NSG 2, ‘NSG 3′ & NSG 4’ (erstwhile ‘A-1’, ‘A’ & ‘B’) category stations.
Under the Abhiyan, so far, 669 escalators at 240 stations and 493 lifts at 214 stations have been provided.
All General Managers of Zonal Railways have been instructed to provide Special Training Modules on Soft Skills as a part of initial or refresher or special courses to all frontline staff directly dealing with customers wherein greater thrust has been given towards customer satisfaction and the need to focus on customer as principal client.
They said that all commercial frontline staffs are given special training on passenger amenities wherein training on special facilities provided for physically challenged persons and provision of wheel chair are given.
Zonal Railways have been instructed to provide one wheelchair per platform and in case of island platforms, one wheel chair per two platforms at all A-1 and A category stations. Yatri Mitra Sewa has also been introduced at major railway stations for enabling passengers to book wheel chairs services cum porter services free of cost through NGOs, Charitable trust, PSUs etc under CSR and responsibility of providing this facility has been entrusted with IRCTC.
