New Delhi: Looking to reach out to passengers via social media, the railways has acquired a handsome following of 4.51 lakh on twitter and more than 3.8 lakh on its Facebook page. Concerted efforts are being made to engage with passengers and customers on social media in a big way, said a senior ministry official involved with the monitoring of the railways' social networking pages.
Now, all Divisional Railway Managers (DRM) and General Managers (GM) in all the zones have created their own official handles in order to reach out to passengers with real-time solutions as per the directions of Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu. DRMs and GMs are key officials in railways who are responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the railways concerning passenger and freight operations.
The two social media pages of the railways are followed widely as they provide a combination of information relevant to passengers, new policies and ideas, innovations, new developments in infrastructure and rolling stock as well as vignettes of the past.
"The focus is on maintaining the best-possible connect with the public to collect passenger feedback and address grievances in a transparent manner," the official said, adding that "the strongest feature of the twitter handle, RailMinIndia, is its responsiveness to the grievances and suggestions offered by its followers". The twitter handles of all the GMs and DRMs have been provided on the ministry's twitter handle as also on its Facebook page and on the Indian Railways website, www.indianrailways.gov.in.
