You might have loved that tomato soup, which came along with a generous knob of butter and bread sticks, straight from the pantries of the Indian Railways. But Sarah’s experience may just make you rethink a bit.
A bunch of passengers travelling in the Duronto Express from Ernakulam to Mumbai raised a complaint with the Kozhikode station master, last Sunday, after stumbling upon railway staff mixing tomato soups with water filled from toilet taps.
The passengers of the B4 coach of the Duronto Express, saw the pantry workers adulterating the tomato soup, with toilet tap water. Halting the train at once, for over 15 minutes at the Kozhikode railway station, the passengers then lodged a written complaint with the Station master, protesting over the incident.
However to make things worse, the passengers also came across a suggestion book, where a huge backlog of complaints were found unaddressed. Right from cockroach infested biriyanis to unhygienic bedding; the complaints had not even been cleared by the TTE.
“It is implausible for things to change overnight. For instance the food served is just one aspect of everything that the IRCTC does. While it is difficult to have eyes everywhere, it is also important to pull up the people who do this,” says Sarah May John, a passenger of the train, to The News Minute.
While Sarah also raised the issue on Twitter, IRCTC retorted back that the food served was tasted by a senior official before circulation. “The complaint was not about the quality or taste of the food served, but a matter of adulteration that happened much later- once the food had left the pantry,” says Sarah.
@sureshpprabhu yesterday's #Duronto Exp problem. Server mixed soup with toilet tap water. Was a passenger, sorry to have seen it all (1/2)
— Sarah May John (@sarahmayjohn) May 16, 2016
There was no complaint about taste/quality about soup except 1complaint,in Mumbai-Ernakulum Duronto,high level detailed inquiry ordered 2/2
— IRCTC Ltd. (@IRCTC_Ltd) May 16, 2016
She also says that the workers tried to cover it up, by calling the incident to be a mistake where the water accidentally fell into the soup. “They might have probably wanted to pocket the difference so that there was more quantity. In a larger sense there needs to be something done about this,” she adds.
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