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Journalism of Courage
Even as railway officials encourage people to use the automated ticket vending machines (ATVMs),commuters are facing difficulty as only 80 of the 194 machines on the Western Railway (WR) function.
It has been proposed that zonal railways sanction 400 ATVMs for its suburban section. WR cancelled the annual maintenance contract of 114 ATVMs in July. These machines were installed by Axel,which was also given the annual maintenance contract. WR had awarded contracts of 80 machines to Forbes.
Divisional Railway Manager Shailendra Kumar said,The codal life of the machines has expired. Though the annual maintenance contract was in place,the performance of the company was very poor. So,we decided to cancel the contract and condemn these machines. We have proposed to set up 400 ATVMs in the suburban section.
Central Railway (CR) was the first to install ATVMs in the suburban section in 2007 on an experimental basis,followed by WR. At present,there are 385 ATVMs at 76 stations of CR.
Bina Shrivastava,a commuter,who often boards the local train from the Malad station where six ATVMs had been removed,said,I have a smart card,but there are only two machines at Malad station. At times,even those machines are not operational.
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