With nearly 1.25 lakh essential staff workers registered with Maharashtra government, Mumbai locals have restarted, post a hiatus of almost 3 months, to ferry them from Monday.
The Central and Western Railway along with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) confirmed to run the local trains on Sunday evening only for essential service providers.
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Check out the guidelines here-
– For a staff care worker to travel, it is mandatory to carry their identity card, the entry will not be permitted without it.
– There will only be one entry and exit point on the station and only a few ticket booking counters will be open.
– Passengers have to run through two entry-level checks – first is manual and the other through e-pass.
– All the activities will be supervised by RPF (Railway protection force), GRP (Government Railway Police), and railway staff.
– To avoid any contact, an e-pass will be provided to every government or private essential service provider with their name, photograph, designation, names of office and residence railway stations on it.
– This e-pass will have a unique QR code on it which will be scanned on the entry checkpoint.
– To keep social distancing in check, railway authorities have allowed only 700 people to travel in a train at once, which otherwise, can easily accommodate 1200.
– While there is no mention of the mandatory use of the Aarogya Setu app, Railway officials have stated that a check on social distancing be kept.
The Central Railways is likely to operate 200 trains. On the other hand, Western railways will run 73 pairs of trains.
The first train left today from Virar to Churchgate early in the morning at 5:30 am. The trains will run between 5:30 am and 11 pm. Most of the trains are estimated to run on the same route.
Maharashtra government is looking forward to normalizing the situation in the state despite the fact that the state reports the highest COVID-19 positive patients in the country.
The state has reported 1,07,958 confirmed cases and 3950 deaths as per the data provided by the Health Ministry on Monday morning.
Mumbai alone reports a total of 58,135 cases as of Sunday night, including 28,959 active cases, 26,986 recovered/discharged and 2,190 deaths.
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