Maligaon, November 29 (MExN): The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is on a continuous mission to provide better amenities and facilities to rail users and passengers, an official release informed today. The initiatives taken for improvement in passenger amenities and facilities has resulted into growth of 7.28% in numbers of passenger and 13.77% growth in passenger earnings during current year, the press release NFR Chief Public Relations Officer Pranav Jyoti Sharma maintained. Apart from taking the initiatives on digital front, added thrust has been put in various fronts like cleanliness and catering services apart from providing better infrastructure in station premises, it said. Digitization has already resulted in shifting of 50.32% reservation workload to E-ticketing platforms as on October, 2018 and about Rs. 10 crs will be spent this current year to further promote digitization, it added. As the process of digitization, NFR said that Universal Payment Interface (UPI) has already been introduced in all Passenger Reservation System (PRS) & Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) counters. 178 POS (point of sale) machines have been provided at different PRS counters and 88 POS machines at various catering units to promote cashless transaction while E-catering has been introduced in all trains. The release further said that Mobile ticketing (UTS on Mobile) introduced over NFR from October 25 for cashless transaction of un-reserved tickets. Four new UTS counters and five new UTS cum PRS counters were opened during the current financial year. Mechanised cleaning has also been introduced in 371 stations to provide passenger better cleanliness and hygienic environment at stations, it maintained. New Foot-Over-Bridges, Lifts, Divyangjan friendly toilets are being provided at many stations aiming to provide better amenities to all and 3 lifts have already been commissioned. About 40 more lifts and 18 escalators will be provided soon and waiting halls, platforms, retiring rooms are also being renovated and provided with better amenities.
