Who's afraid of COVID-19?

Even the new strain of the COVID19 virus has not deterr ed commuters from crowding at stations and travelling without proper permission With social distancing having gone for a toss commuters are seen crowding at entry and exit points of railway stations and peak hours have started to look like the prepandemic times with jampacked locals According to the railways officials have been catching more than 2000 passengers travelling without permission dailyConcerned about the crowding at stations passenger association member Lata Argade said Why is there no social distancing Has everyone got permission to travel There is so much crowding everywhere and almost no checks while entering stationsA queue outside CSMTRailway sources said that on the Western Railway WR section till December 2020 45323 cases of people travelling without tickets were reported and fine of 190 crore collected from them With the new strain around this kind of crowding is very dangerous and the railways need to work on a policy to fix timings in a way that peak hours are not there an activist saidLimited gatesThe problem is acute with limited number of entryexit points and not many escalators elevators in use The railways should draw a plan for all stations again and rethink on opening more entryexit points The limited gates are leading to more crowding and creating problems said Prakash Munim a commuter who travels on the WR sectionPeak hours have started to look like the preCOVID timesThe crowd at Malad and all other stations has been extreme It is more of a problem while enteringexiting a railway station as limited number of bridges and gates are kept open said commuter Pooja ChichkarShe further said At CSMT for example every morning there is a queue just to get out of the station because limited gates are kept openNational Railway Users Consultative Committee member Subhash Guptsa said The railways should understand the commuters problems as well They do not want to violate rules but if they hire a cab they will end up paying 250 for a short trip People are travelling without permission because they are not allowed to The government should understand their inconvenience as well As per latest data on January 9 this year 837554 passengers travelled on the WR section In the first 10 days of this month 7179020 passengers travelled on the section and since June last year 72725890 passengers took the trains Central Railway CR officials said that on an average 8 to 10 lakh commuters travel daily on the sectionChecking intensifiedChief public relations officer of CR Shivaji Sutar said Ticket checking has been intensified In December last year about 39220 cases of violations were reported and a total fine of 118 crore was collected Since the lockdown about 93671 such cases have been reported and 305 crore fine collected from violators Chief public relations officer of WR Sumit Thakur said The Mumbai division of WR has conducted regular and intensive ticketchecking drives The section has been running 1201 special suburban services for essential workers and other categories of passengers during stipulated hours as notified by the government We have also detected cases of fake ID card holders who have been travelling in special suburban servicesCISF jawans refuse to undergo testsA group of 40 CISF jawans argued with BMC officials and refused to undergo checks after arriving at the Dadar railway station from Bhuj in Gujarat on Sunday afternoon Since the train had arrived from Gujarat one of the listed states we requested them to cooperate but they said tests were not meant for them but for the general public and walked out of the station said a BMC officialTest drive mdash crowding just as during peak hrsA test drive conducted by midday has found that despite random checks crowding was taking place at railway stations When this reporter entered the Mulund East railway station he did not spot a single cop on duty to check whether people having valid permission were entering the premises The only check that happens is at the booking counter When a commuter asks for a ticket heshe has to produce a valid ID card only after which the ticket is issued But there was crowding as usual on the train this reporter boarded Less crowd is seen only during the afternoon when women have been allowed to travelTicket checkingIntensive ticket checking was conducted at the Ghatkopar railway station on Sunday from 7 am to 3 pm A total of 25 ticket checkers and eight RPF jawans detected 259 cases of ticketless travel and fined them A senior railway spokesperson said On Friday a fortress check was undertaken at CSMT between 8 am and 4 pm and a total of538 cases of unauthorised travel were detected of which 58 were fake ID cases We collected 13 lakh fine at CSMT alone