The Western and Central Railway have both shut down the nearly 90 Cash/Coin Ticket Vending Machines (CoTVM) that had been procured for the big push by the railway board on Mumbai suburban, for decreasing counters at stations and thereby costs as well.
The investment for this move was a good Rs 6 crore by the Indian Railway (IR) but a month ago, all these efforts were muted when tickets worth around Rs 5 lakh were purchased from a stolen machine in Pune.
A design flaw has left these machines vulnerable to tampering: the part of the machine that reads and authenticates the currency in form of notes or coins is not able to do so.
This one particular CoTVM at Pune station was issuing a lot of tickets, when the commercial staff checked the machine and they realised that the cash and the number of tickets did not tally.
“We have currently shut down all the CoTVMs on suburban Mumbai stations. These machines were initially brought to firstly take away the rush from the ticket counters and thereby reduce the manpower and overall cost required to man these counters,” said an official on condition of anonymity
“Also we noticed that a lot of people do not want the hassle of carrying a smart card and using the automatic ticket vending machine and refilling it,” the official further added.
The Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) is currently working on improving the machines but is uncertain of exactly how long it will take to reach a solution.
