COMMUTERS SUFFERING DESPITE INCREASE IN FARE IN DELHI METRO

The condition of Delhi metro is becoming pathetic day by day. Though the metro fare has increased manifold and so has the crowd of the commuters giving the DMRC tremendous profit the passengers woes is enhancing day by day.

After minutely scrutinising the situation one can conveniently say that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation once maintaining its international standards is not up to the mark after the former chairman and founder of Delhi Metro Dr. Sreedharan relinquishing the charge.

If we leave the newly constructed metro services the old metro stations and their services are in jeopardy. During raining seasons there are multiple leakages here and there in majority of the stations during the monsoons and the hygienic condition really aweful and worrisome with heaps of rubbish or dust accumulating and lying in and outside the outside the corridors and stations seldom cleaned.

Not only this but the ticket selling counters in almost all stations are devoid/ bereft of sufficient staff with most of the counters exhibiting boards showing them as closed.

At times, rather usually one can find hundreds of commuters queing up, particularly the women, old aged and the sick in long ques at the mercy of the ticket counter staff who take long time to deliver tokens and often send the commuters away complaining about shortage of change.

In addition if you complain or request for operating all counters you are met with a non response saying that there are ticket vending machines. When one goes there he or she is unable to operate the machine. If one operates it, the machines do not accept your currency usually as it requires the notes of different denominations and sharp edged notes. This leads to a hell of an inconvenience for commuters.

On holidays in particular or on festive seasons when the rush increases in the metro stations it takes lot of time standing up in long queues to get the tocken as out of 8 counters only two counters function sometimes even one.

There is non availability of medicines or doctors in stations for patients or sick persons suffering from critical illness, by chance, not even a first aid arrangement.

There are no water coolers nor adequate medical first aid system for patients with cardilogical complications on emergency basis.

I though fully appreciate that Delhi metro is tremendously contributing in ferrying about 25 lakh commuters in entire Delhi and salute them for this onerous task and respinsibility but if the problems and difficulties of the commuters would not be looked into and resolved expeditiously this public transport system which has been rated as one of the largest and best in Asia will start earning bad name which we would not like at all.

Hope the metro officials will sympathetically look into these problems being confronted by commuters and find a wayout at the earliest by resolving each and every point raised above, as it has still to go too too far in terms of providing more and more satisfactory services to earn peoples’ appreciation.

I salute the Metro corporation and its able staff with the hope that the existing deficiencies are looked into seriously and remedies found in larger public interest.

Just today a monkey snatched the bag from a commuter to his utter shock in Netaji Subhash Place Metro intersection while he walking in the corridor to board another Metro bound for INA, New Delhi. This incident too states the sorry state of affairs in the Delhi Metro. What’s you take friends?