All-women team of TCs to man Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Express

MUMBAI: In a recent experiment, Western Railway deployed an all-women TTE (travelling ticket examiners) staff on the

Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Express

and saw earnings register a 66% jump in a single day. This convinced higher-ups to launch a pilot project.

Marking a first for WR, beginning March 8, International Women's Day, Shatabdi Express will have all-women ticket checking crew.Currently, of the six TTEs on the Shatabdi Express, only two are women. Usually, women TTEs are deployed on the platform. In Mumbai's WR division there are a total of 96 TTEs of which around 50 are in Mumbai. A senior WR official said, "The trial with the all-women TTE squad was conducted on February 5-6. The results were extremely good as earnings on that day registered an increase of Rs 50,000 from the earlier Rs 30,000. We will now go in for a pilot project."

The idea is the brainchild of WR's senior divisional railway commissioner

Aarti Singh Parihar

. "Women are honest and the earnings on the day we held the trial run with all-women TTE staff proves it."

Earnings are in the form of fines and penalty from unauthorised or ticketless travellers. Officials said some male staff are known to pocket money from fines instead of instead of issuing receipts to passengers. Singh said, "I have begun to counsel women staff to take charge of the

Rajdhani Express

too. However, there is some hesitation as the Mumbai-New Delhi Rajdhani Express is an overnight train. Hopefully, they will soon gain confidence."

Vijeta Dhavan, who has been on duty on the Shatabdi Express said, "Working on suburban trains is difficult because passengers are argumentative and even recovering fines is a problem. On the Shatabdi, though the working hours are long, passengers are cooperative and ticketless travellers usually pay the fine without a fuss."

Tanuja Thakur, another TTE said, "On the Shatabdi, we mainly have to allot vacant seats to waitlisted passengers. It is stressful, but we have now become comfortable handling the duty."

Meanwhile, the Railways have begun to promote women workforce in big way. A few months ago, Central Railway's Matunga station was declared an all-women station. All its employees, including station manager, booking clerks, railway protection force (RPF), announcers etc are women. The initiative has found a mention in the Limca Books of Records for being the first all-women railway station of Indian Railways.


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