Location/place: chennai
Name of company/service: service
The Tambaram railway station suffers from a pathetic and heartless state of lack of basic amenities to host south bound express trains, especially for passengers with disability/special needs. Platforms 6,7,8 & 9 are used for the incoming and outgoing express trains. Following are the key problems that require immediate attention from the railways.
1. The platforms are not lit enough for passenger safety in the night.
2. Platforms are not even to walk, especially when passengers carry luggage.
3. Toilet facility is available almost a kilometer away from the platform and is not safe for passengers to venture during night times.
4. During rainy days, lot of water gets accumulated in patches along the platform and at many places the platforms do not have cover to protect the waiting passengers from heat or rain.
5. The most unacceptable neglect is that those requiring wheel chair need to go to the station masters room, submit their identity card in original and then pick up the wheel chair. One look a the wheel chair, hardly anyone would have the courage to mount on it. It is an age old brken and several times welded wheel chair lacking minimum safety to carry passengers. One has to hire a porter who would wheel the chair to your platform. If it happens to be the platform wherein the express trains pull over, you may be open to an alarming sight. The passenger on the wheelchair is taken through a special way where at first he/she is exposed to stinking smell of urine and human waste, a path hardly lit. One has to go across atleast 6 railway lines, sometimes sit in the chair in between 2 railway tracks where on both trains are passing by. Then comes the last hurdle, the most dangerous while climbing the slope towards the 8th and 9th platform, where usually the express trains stop. The climb up towards the 8th and 9th platform is hardly 5 feet wide. It is a narrow path with steps on one side and railway track on the other and a signal light right in the middle. The porter pushes the wheelchair on the ramp to reach the platform in between the railway signal post and the steps, navigating through a 3 feet gap. The gap is just enough for the wheelchair to be pushed and this thriller ride is almost suicidal. We are living in a mechanized era and an age where human rights and humane consideration need not be taught.
Ironically the railway station is filled with Railway union posters of protest, of functions, on leaders boasting of what they have achieved etc. Would someone be interested in the forgotten affair called passenger care and safety; especially for senior citizens and disabled people? The situation would probably be set right only if a member of some Minister’s family has to be toed on a wheel chair along this hurdle filled, thrilling and stinking path.
I strong suggest atleast some socially conscious youngsters to just experience this to get a feel of what disabled passengers might be going through. Atleast some NGO or service organization could take up the task of providing a wheelchair at the entrance of the station, be it for a cost on the passengers. The least that railways could do is to allow a helping hand that could come forward to implement a safer wheelchair passage for disabled and senior citizens that cannot climb the steep steps or walk across the platforms. I don’t expect the railway union to do anything except receiving and fighting for higher benefits. Some corporate organization could adopt the railway station infrastructure and make the passengers feel that they are wanted on this planet.
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