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Thane Malayalees come together to make their train commute better

Members of the Malayalee community in Thane and adjoining areas have started a campaign to make Kerala-bound passengers aware of their commuting rights and, if need be, make a splash on various social media platforms of the railways' shortcomings.

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Commuters at CST station, Mumbai.
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Members of the Malayalee community in Thane and adjoining areas have started a campaign to make Kerala-bound passengers aware of their commuting rights and, if need be, make a splash on various social media platforms of the railways' shortcomings.

Volunteers of the All-Thane Malayalee Association's Yatra Samiti have set a target of handing out almost 10,000 pamphlets to passengers on the LTT-Kochuveli Superfast Express, the LTT-Thiruvananthapuram Netravati Expresss and the LTT-Ernakulam Duronto Express over the next few days to create a pressure group of passengers to get the railways to act.
"These are 'safe journey, pleasant journey' handbills that have instructions on them on how to ensure that the train is clean and the railway staff, including ticket-checkers, are receptive to complaints," said Sashikumar Nair of the ATMA Yatra Samiti.

Among the requests the handbills make from the passenger is to ensure complaints of dirty trains and penal crimes like thefts be properly registered with the ticket-checkers as well as train attendance staff and copies of the written complaints obtained and preserved for future action.

Another instruction is to highlight discrepancies and lack of amenities from the railways, such as lack of water or dirty toilets, on social media as well as print and television media. Officials of the Samiti told dna that with the railway minister as well as the railway bureaucracy very active on Twitter and the like, the right use of social media would attract immediate action.

"If all passengers in a train, instead of behaving like idle onlookers, come together and help each other, everyone's travel experience can be improved. The tone of the handbill is that all those who travel on proper tickets are bonafide passengers and customers of the railways. The passenger has every right to avail all the facilities that the railway promises its ticket-buying patrons," said Nair.

Not a day too soon

The campaign is timely because passengers on these trains say that the spate of thefts on this route continues unabated. On March 21, A Shareef travelling on the 12202 Kuchiveli-LTT Garib Rath Express was the latest victim — his bag containing Rs2.5 lakh cash and debit cards was stolen. The theft happened when the train was between Madgaon in Goa and Mangaon in Raigad. A case was registered with the Panvel railway police. Shareef was travelling from Kayankulam in Kerala to Panvel.

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