Pune Railway Division sees 90% jump in complaints in 2023-24 over 2022-23

According to the RTI response, 4,800 complaints were resolved in 2022-23, whereas 8,961 complaints were addressed successfully in 2023-24.

The RTI response also provided a breakdown of the feedback categories: excellent, satisfactory, unsatisfactory and ‘no feedback received’, with figures for 2022-23 being 212, 264, 290, and 4,382 respectively, and for 2023-24 being 1,299, 977, 748 and 6,914 respectively. This indicates complaints with no feedback are also considered as successfully addressed.

A railway official from the DRM, Pune, suggested that the surge in complaints could be due to post-Covid impact or more social media awareness among people. “There are various ways to reach out to us to register a complaint but one reason behind the rise in complaints we noticed is the growing use of RailMadad app while another reason is the introduction of a new feature by the railways — the Artificial Intelligence-powered (AI) 139 call service,” he said.

“This feature was launched last year, making it easier for passengers to register their complaints by calling and clearly speaking to the AI system on call,” an official added.

As per the RTI response, there is a 42 per cent increase in ‘excellent’ feedback in 2023-24 compared to the 27 per cent in 2022-23. ‘Unsatisfactory’ feedback dropped to 24 per cent in 2023-24 from 37 per cent in 2022-23, with ‘satisfactory’ feedback figures remaining relatively consistent.

“The ‘unsatisfactory’ feedback should not exceed 10 per cent,” the official said. He explained that the criteria for measuring ‘unsatisfactory’ feedback are flexible and depend on the nature of the complaints. “If the complaints are on demands like the operation of train services on certain routes that have no immediate solution, such complaints automatically fall under the category of unsatisfactory,” he said.

There are control rooms in the DRM office assigned to different departments such as mechanical, operations, commercial, security, and so on. “As soon as someone tweets or files a complaint through an app, our onboard squad of six members, including the Onboard Housekeeping Service (OBHS) reaches out to the passenger within the given time… this is one of the criteria used to measure excellent and satisfactory feedback,” the railway official added.