Western Railway has always been at the forefront of adopting various technological advancements while actively participating in the Digital India mission. Moving in this direction, Western Railway has provided Hand Held Terminals (HHT) to all its 1383 ticket checking staff in all 298 Mail/Express trains originating from Western Railway to check tickets of passengers in trains.
With the implementation of this device, the physical paper chart system has been done away with, leading to a completely paperless working system. It is worth mentioning that the implementation of HHT has benefitted more than 40,000 passengers.
According to a press release issued by Sumit Thakur, Chief Public Relations Officer of Western Railway, with the implementation of HHT, allotment of berths to RAC passengers is done only as per the order given in the reservation chart and vacant berths are allotted to passengers other than RAC passengers. cannot be allocated. In the last week, 21,453 berths were allotted to RAC passengers.
Similarly, vacant berths after allotment to passengers in a train are automatically transferred to the next station from where passengers can use these vacant berths. Accordingly, 21,222 berths were released to onward stations through HHT in the last 7 days.
In terms of refund of tickets, the physical chart first needed to be verified at the destination station to ascertain whether the passengers had traveled or not and due to this refund took up to a month. Now with this device there is no need for verification at the destination and refund can be done within 2-3 days of receipt of the claim.
Thakur further said that printing of physical charts has been stopped which is helping in saving paper and environment protection. HHT has enhanced the maximum utilization of vacant berths as vacant berths are automatically transferred to the next station for use by passengers at further stations.
These tools provide real-time information about the number of passengers traveling and the number of berths available in any train. The use of HHT has reduced the workload of physical verification of charts for granting refunds and the time taken to process refunds.
