A railway committee constituted by railway minister Piyush Goyal has recommended deputing in a train a service captain identifiable by his uniform to address problems of passengers while they are travelling.
According to the report, the service captains will be tasked with addressing complaints related to cleanliness, amenities on board trains and issues related to berth accommodation and other operational issues.
The report has been submitted to the railway board and suggests that the national transporter provide single window supervision for all on board amenities for swift resolution of passengers complaints and issues.
A railway supervisor, service captain, be deputed on all mail and express trains… Every division should form a pool of on-board supervisors, the report said.
Explaining the logic behind having a single in-charge for all passenger-related issues on a train, the report said while railways operated a number of on-board services in trains, passengers are currently expected to contact different personnel for each service.
There is hence a need for ensuring availability of a single supervisor to coordinate onboard services and one who can be approached by customers as a single window for all types of available onboard services, the report said.
As of now, passengers have no option but to approach the TTE for all grievances and more often than not, they turn out to be of no help. Former railway minister Suresh Prabhu had encouraged grievance redressal through Twitter but overflow of complaints, often frivolous, turned out to be a deterrent.
The report said service captains should be appointed for a minimum of two years from among serving employees of the level of a junior engineer or master craftsman by a committee of senior officials of the division.
The duties of the service captain include supervising of cleaning, coordinating with different department regarding complaints of linen, repairs and operational issues, supervise coach maintenance issues such as missing passenger amenity items, issues of berths, windows, doors and pest and rodent control issues.
The committee has also recommended that the service captain be given a pre-defined dress so that he can be easily recognised and a set of hand tools and tool kit to assist him in attending to the job. A tailor-made training module along with competency certification at the senior scale should be introduced so that the service captain is adequately trained for the above duties, the report stated.
The committee has also suggested that since the deployment of service captains would require significant input of men, the scheme should be introduced in a phased manner in 10 select trains in at least four zonal railways as a pilot project first.