RailEnquiry

GUWAHATI, Aug 27 – The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is working to expand the number of Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) facilities in the region, besides initiating some other steps, as part of its effort to make its services accessible to a greater number of people and increase transparency in its operations.
A senior Railway official told The Assam Tribune today that this financial year a target has been set to open 25 new PRS centres and also install 33 additional PRS-cum-UTS system in the NFR region.

He said many towns in Assam and other States in the NFR zone still lack PRS centres and the new centres would be mostly set up at district headquarters which are not connected by rail lines.

Currently, there are 128 PRS, 81 PRS-cum-UTS centres and 334 UTS centres functional under the NFR.

The official said that NFR has fully implemented the ‘e-auction’ system for selling scraps to make the process more transparent.

“Earlier we used to conduct spot auctions for scraps, like discarded tracks, wagons, wheels and other items of which we had no use. However, with implementation of the e-auction system the process has been streamlined and has become more transparent,” he said.

During the first four months of the current fiscal, NFR sold Rs 11 crore worth of scraps. It is noteworthy that NFR’s Stores Department has won the Railway Board’s ‘Sales Management Shield’ for 2012-13 for its implementation of the e-auction system.

The official added that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has in recent months undertaken a series of drives against anti-social elements. During the January-June period of his year, over 80 offenders involved in various offences were nabbed and Railway property worth around Rs 15 lakh recovered from them.

In addition, drives are also being intensified against people involved in trafficking of drugs and contraband substances by trains and a number of such persons have been arrested and illegal items seized, he added.