Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu has asked the heads of the city’s railway police to train their men in soft skills like etiquette and people-building skills in order to improve passenger experience. The minister said given that Mumbai has the largest suburban train network, it also has a high interaction rate between the Railway Police Force (RPF) personnel and commuters and the lower rung of the force should be better equipped for this interaction.
The RPF is known to be a little heavy-handed when investigating any incident. “When you enter the RPF as a constable or at a junior level there is a certain toughness that is inculcated in us as part of the job. But there is no special skill set provided to us about how to behave with passengers; it’s all very clinical like checking bags, tickets among others, so that is why you will see a lot commuters often complain that the RPF personnel were rude or non co-operative,” said a senior RPF official.
As a result of this, the first brainstorming work shop on soft skills was held at Mumbai Central by Western Railway’s (WR) RPF on Sunday evening.
WR senior divisional security commissioner Anand Vijay Jha said that they are trying to identify areas for improvement. “The idea is that the public contact points are being first identified. For example, we are first looking at the vulnerable section of passengers like senior citizens, women, physically disabled or one-time travellers who often get lost and end up catching the wrong passenger train,” he said.
Another issue that will have to be dealt with is the fact that RPF is not only a law and order body but is one of its kind because it deals with railway passengers as well. “We will have to customise the soft skill training heavily since we are one-of-a-kind agencies that deals with a public that is always on the go. So yes, there will have to be a lot of customisation by whoever finally takes up the job of providing us those skill sets,” he further added.
Both the Central Railway (CR) and WR are meeting with agencies that teach these skills in corporate settings this week and will finalise a contract for the same in the coming months.
