Chandragiri railway station in safe hands of women

Tirupati: Chandragiri railway station, which is in Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s native mandal in Chittoor district, became the first railway station in Andhra Pradesh to be managed by all women. South Central Railway General Manager Vinod Kumar Yadav visited the station and formally handed over the responsibilities to the women crew. 

Towards empowering women to do anything on their own Indian Railways have been making some selected stations as ‘All Women managed Railway Stations’. Speaking to the media, GM Yadav said, “Women can achieve anything. 

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we choose this station to be manned by all women and Begumpet station in Hyderabad also getting same status from today onwards”.

In South Central Railway jurisdiction Tirupati and Begumpet will become ‘All Women Stations’. Prior to these two stations there were only two other stations run by all women staff. They are Matunga station in North West Railway and Gandhinagar station near Jaipur in Central Railway.

“The idea is to make one station in each division out of total six divisions in South Central Railway to be manned by all women staff. On this occasion GM has interacted with the women staff in Chandragiri station and congratulated them.

The staff felt happy but explained their problems to reach the station which is far away from Chandragiri town. Both GM Yadav and DRM Vijay Prathap Singh assured them to look into their problems and will find a solution to solve them.

When asked why Chandragiri was selected for the purpose, GM explained that it was closer to Tirupati and being a small station, it requires less number of staff. In all 12 staff were required there. Station masters, booking clerks, points men, security and sub staff were all women there.

Chandragiri station fetches SCR an average revenue of Rs 5,000 per day with about 234 passengers travel through the station daily. Speaking to The Hans India, Station Master K Purnima said that she was feeling happy to become the first station master of all women station.

This was a good idea and definitely there will be good coordination. Booking clerk K Akshitha said, “We are looking for such an opportunity. We were thrilled to be part of this and wish that this experiment should become a big success.” Senior DCM Rakesh, station director K Satyanarayana and others were present.

By V Pradeep Kumar