Mumbai: The Western Railway (WR) police has asked commuters to stop making unnecessary calls on the helpline 182, which is meant for ensuring commuter security. Currently, over 90 per cent of the calls made to the helpline are unrelated to security, with most complaints being about lost baggage.
The helpline, which is run by Railway Police Force (RPF), gets an average of 10 to 15 calls (per day), out of which most concern loss of luggage. Inspector general Udai Shukla said, “More than 90 per cent of the calls in the helpline since its launch have been for things unrelated to security.” He further added, “The calls are made about how people were travelling in a particular train left their luggage in the train and there is something valuable like an expensive laptop or a gadget in it, which the commuters don’t want to be lost.”
The RPF currently has placed posters advertising that if a commuter faces any kind of physical/verbal threat while travelling, he/she can call on the helpline to register a complaint. The helpline number was announced in the Railway Budget last year by Union minister Suresh Prabhu.
Helpline blues
- Western Railway has received around 287 complaints in the month of the December. 158 of them were about loss of baggage.
- The remaining calls were related to complaints like a man entering the women’s compartment or about hawkers.
- You can dial the number only when you are on railway premises, a measure taken to avoid unnecessary calls.
- The control room in the helpline is equipped with a facility that can read the location of the caller.
