Sadhan Pande travels with commuters in Metro to learn about their predicaments

Kolkata: State Consumer Affairs minister Sadhan Pande on Monday travelled in a crowded metro rake along with regular commuters and learnt about their experience of travelling.

The minister boarded a train bound from Noapara to Kavi Subhas from Girish Park and entrained at Park Street interacting with passengers during his journey.

"I have urged the Metro authorities to regularise the services to an extent so that the frequency should be every 3 minutes. They have informed me that a proposal in this regard has already been forwarded with the railway board," Pande said.

During his journey, a number of passengers complained about the irregularity in services and lack of air conditioning facilities in old rakes, which the Metro has not been able to phase out as yet.

"It is the oldest Metro in the city. The East-West Metro is coming up and all rakes running in that route will have air-conditioning facilities. All metro rakes in this route should also have same facilities and I have urged the authorities to expedite the process of introducing new rakes with AC facilities to phase out the old rakes that do not have AC," Pande added.

Pande asked the Metro rail authorities to introduce toilet facilities for passengers at every station in the route.

"There are toilets for Metro staffs. They can open it up for use of the passengers too," the minister said.

He further asked metro officials to install glass doors at stations to prevent suicides.

"The doors should open up only when a train arrives at a station," he said adding that the sensor of the sliding doors of the Metro should be strengthened to prevent any untoward incident. More than 6.5 lakh commuters avail of the Metro

services in the city and the number of stations in the network is 24.