Railways has received over 5,500 complaints over catering services in trains in the first seven months of the current financial year, Parliament was informed today.
Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain said in Lok Sabha that 5,665 complaints were received by the railways between April 1-October 31 this year, over bad catering services.
According to the data provided by the minister, complaints regarding food have been on the up since 2014-2015. While only 7,055 complaints were received in 2014-2015, it rose to 8,708 in 2015-2016 and further to 10,437 the next year.
Complaints over the quality of food were the highest with 2,890 instances being registered with the national transporter, followed by complaints regarding over charging, misbehaviour, quantity of food, hygiene and other catering related issues.
"In its endeavour to provide quality and hygienic food to the passengers, railways have developed and operationalised and institutionalised mechanism for monitoring of quality and hygiene if catering services through regular inspections at various levels to address catering complaints", Gohain said.
The minister stated that railways has taken a slew of actions against offending caterers -- it has fined 2,505, warned 1,305, terminated the services of 12, suitably advised 440, initiated disciplinary action against four and reprimanded 1,005 more -- in 2017.
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