Hyderabad: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has halted the interstate train movement from almost eight months now as a result the South Central Railway (SCR) and the Multi-Modal Transport System (MMTS) stood still and faced tremendous losses. However, now that COVID has become a new normal of life the MMTS and SCR are set to resume its operation and are waiting for the nod from government.
The officials state that these two railway authorities have incurred losses up to Rs 20 crore in the past seven months. As reported by The Hans India, a senior South Central Railway (SCR) official on condition of anonymity said that the revenue generated from these suburban trains is in the range of Rs 8 to 9 lakh per day i.e., around Rs 2.5 crore per month. He further added that with train services being suspended to public since March 22 due to Covid lockdown the MMTS services has incurred a loss of Rs 20 crore.
While, the partial local train services are running in certain states on the pretext of a few conditions however, the Railway Ministry, so far, has not issued any such guidelines to resume the services of MMTS.
SCR operates services on Secunderabad-Lingampally, Hyderabad-Lingampally and Secunderabad-Faluknuma sections.
As reported by the officials around 1.60 lakh passengers use the MMTS services every day and are awaiting for the green signal from the government. The fare for the services is in three slabs Rs 5, Rs 10 and Rs 15.
MMTS operates about 121 train services covering 25 local stations apart from Secunderabad, Kacheguda and Hyderabad stations. “Once we get green signal we would start the operations under strict covid guidelines,” he added.