Kolkata: CCTV surveillance in Howrah, Sealdah, Siliguri and Santragachi railway stations will be upgraded along with installation of florescent lamps at Metro tunnels.
This was decided at a high-level coordination meeting held at the GM's new conference hall on Monday afternoon.
Arun Kumar, director general, Railway Protection Force (RPF), said a proposal stating that the RPF will conduct an inquiry in case of any theft or dacoity in trains has been sent to the Union Cabinet for consideration. Senior officials of Coal India Limited, (CIL), Coal consumers, CISF, PCSCs of ER, SECR, SER, E Co Rly, ECR and railway officials of Eastern Railway attended the meeting.
Issues pertaining to loading/unloading of coal at various sidings, its transportation by railways, role of CISF and private security agencies, ways to minimise transit loss en-route due to pilferage, viability of use of tarpaulin for covering the loaded coal rake, periodical inspection of weighbridges to ensure proper weighment at loading and unloading point to minimise weighing variation and verification of calibration etc were discussed in length.
In the meeting, all stake holders maintained that incidents of pilferage of coal have gone down but there are other technical and external factors which contribute towards loss of coal during transit.
This meeting turned out to be a unique platform for the stake holders in exchanging their ideas and strategies to ensure proper transportation of coal with minimum loss/theft of coal.
The meeting was organised by IG-cum-PCSC, RPF, Eastern Railway, Rajinder Kumar Malik, which was attended by High officials of CIL & its subsidiaries, officials of Coal consumers, S S Gahlot, AGM/ER¸ D K Jha, CFTM/ER, M P Mehta, PCCM/ER, S Biswas, CCM(FM)/ER, IG-cum-PCSC, SECR, R S Chouhan, IG-cum-PCSC, E Co Rly, Atul Pathak, IG-cum-PCSC, SER, S C Padhi, IG-cum-PCSC, ECR, Sri Ravinder Verma, Dy CSC/ER/HQ, Sr DSC/DHN, Sealdah, ASN, DSC/MLDT.
On this occasion, DG/RPF also released a repository of criminals and passengers arrested by Anti-TOPB team of RPF/Howrah Division for their offences and held a press conference.