The Northern Railway Zone has taken an initiative for the security of women passengers. The authorities have installed an ‘emergency button’ facility for passengers travelling from Delhi to cities like Ghaziabad, Meerut, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonepat, Alwar, Palwal, Gurugram, Faridabad, Aligarh, Shamli and Baghpat. On the similar lines of Delhi Metro, these buttons will be installed in EMU and MEMU trains of Indian Railways.
In case of any emergency, women passengers can press the button and a resource person on the other side will help the passenger. More than one lakh women passengers travel to different cities for their work. This initiative will provide necessary help and security to women passengers. Talk buttons will also be installed in coaches.
These buttons will allow passengers to share their grievances during the journey. They will be directly connected to the guard cabin, loco pilot and control room of that station. In case of emergency, the guard cabin and the loco pilot will be the first person to solve the grievance of the passenger.
The Delhi Railway Board has started the tender process for the installation. The Indian Railways has already installed CCTV cameras, flasher lights in ladies’ coaches and EMU rakes in some zonal railways. When the alarm chain of the coach is pulled, these lights will start blinking, setting off a buzzer. For the improvement and modernisation of the Indian Railways, the ministry has taken many initiatives like technologies including the Hot Box Detector (BBD), Machine Vision Inspection System (MVIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS) in wagons are also being developed for use.
Better lighting has been installed in the coaches with an improved scale of mobile charging outlets in air-conditioned, sleepers, and general coaches.
The Indian Railways also developed Kavach Automatic Train Safety (ATP), which has been adopted as the country’s train protection system. With 77 different locomotives, Kavach has so far covered 1455 km on the South Central Railway.
