Provides about 1.1 million meals to passengers daily
Railways imposes fine of Rs 4.5 crore for poor catering services
New Delhi, July 24, 2017: Around 23 million passengers travel on Indian Railways on a daily basis. Indian Railways provide approximately 1.1 million meals to passengers every day out of these 1 million are provided on board itself.
There have been challenges to improve the catering services over Indian Railways and for the last three years not only an in-depth analysis has been undertaken to identify the root causes but also structural reforms were initiated to solve the problem institutionally.
The Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu, in his first budget speech, had announced the launch of e-Catering services on train, which would allow passengers to order food from the brands of their choice.
Now passengers can order Pizzas or Burgers or even Dal Makhani on train. Interestingly such a service is not available in many railways of the developed world. The Minister also instituted a Zero Tolerance policy towards catering.
In the last six months itself, as many as 7 contracts were terminated, blacklisted 16 contractors blacklisted, action taken against 21 officers and imposed fines of more than Rs 4.5 crore.
Catering services on Indian Railways are classified into two broad categories viz. mobile catering and static catering services.
At present, there are 360 pairs of trains with pantry cars, which include 22 pairs of Rajdhanis, 25 pairs of Shatabdis, 18 pairs of Duronto trains and 295 pairs of mail/express trains. There are about 9686 Major and Minor Static Units on Indian Railways, which include 50 Jan Ahaars outlets, 224 Food Plazas/Fast Food Units.
The in depth analysis revealed that unless the current policy was changed and contract frameworks completely overhauled, things would not change permanently. It was also realised that unless the quality of food at source is not controlled, onboard quality would not change.
The Railways Minister announced unbundling of Food production and Food disbursement through a revamped New Catering Policy.
Under this policy, ultra modern kitchens ranging from mega to nano with partnership of private sector would be established which would use the most hygienic and latest equipment for food preparation.