Railways taking due note of Monday's confusion, decided to adhere with strict ID checks before letting anyone board the staff trains
Railway's emergency train for staff at Marine line station on Tuesday. Pic/Bipin Kokate
Following Monday's incident, were regular commuters stormed the maintenance tower wagon, the railways have now enforced strict ID checks on staff train to avoid any confusion. Also, to maintain social distancing while travelling to work, the railways will attach extra bogies instead of one-wagon trains.
"Commodities like food grain, salt, sugar, milk, edible oil, onions, fruits & vegetables, petroleum products, coal etc are being loaded at railway terminals. Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Indian Railways (IR) has suspended the operations of passenger train services across the country till 31st March 2020," a spokesperson said.
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Close coordination is being maintained with the state governments so that rakes of essential commodities are handled smoothly without any delay, amidst various restriction imposed in the wake of COVID-19.
In an important clarification, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has appealed passengers to not cancel any tickets on their own.
"Doubts have been raised regarding cancellation of e-tickets subsequent to the halting of railway passenger trains. It may be noted that for trains cancelled by railway in its complete run, refund on e-tickets is full and automatic. In this case, no cancellation exercise is required to be done on the part of the user. If the user cancels his e-ticket in situations of train cancellations, there are chances that he may get less refund. Hence passengers are advised not to cancel e-tickets on their own for those trains which have been cancelled.
"Refund will be credited to the user account used for booking of e-tickets automatically. No charges are deducted by the railways in case of train cancellation. Train cancelled by railways can be seen on National Train Enquiry System (NTES )," Siddharth Singh, PRO IRCTC, said.
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