Kochi: The Railway Ministry makes tall claims but railways stands where it was decades back as far as maintaining punctuality is concerned.
While the centre is boasting over the much hyped bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, it seems to be not bothered to ensure that trains in other parts of the country run somewhere around its scheduled time.
The New Delhi -Thiruvananthapuram Kerala Express was running late by 90 minutes on July 4. This train reached 45 minutes late at Mathura station which is the next station after New Delhi.
Though it reduced the delay in some sectors, the delay increased by over 100 minutes when it reached Gudur.
The 06443 Ernakulam junction – Kollam Memu started at 1832 hrs against its scheduled time of 1615 hrs on July 4.
Fifteen minutes delay from the station of origin. Adding insult to the injury was the absence of any announcement about the delay by the authorities.
Ironically, the railways the other day had announced a change in time of a few trains by a few minutes as if they are operating trains on time.
A few weeks back, the railways had celebrated commissioning of Ernakulam – Kayamkulam doubling work and claimed that there would be no more delays in future despite knowing that what they were claiming was hypothetical.
Talking to thenewsskerala.com, a local traveller lamented that unpunctuality has added to the woes of common man who are yet to recover from the shock inflicted by Railways by withdrawing facilities like concessions and fare hike of local trains by 100 percent.
Photo Credit: Facebook
