Soon after Prabhu took over as the Railway Minister in the Narendra Modi government, he initiated to set up a department to work exclusively on social media interaction in July 2015.(PTI)

The Railway Ministry’s Twitter handle @RailMinIndia, which boasts of 2.7 million followers, has become an effective tool to redress passenger grievances, and acts upon 3,000 complaints daily, according to officials. Also, the social media platform has become a contact point between the Railways a commuters which has proved to be a big boon, said a senior Railway Board official in an interaction with a group of journalists from Mumbai, who were invited to Delhi on the initiative of the Railway minister Suresh Prabhu. Soon after Prabhu took over as the Railway Minister in the Narendra Modi government, he initiated to set up a department to work exclusively on social media interaction in July 2015. The Ministry’s Twitter handle has logged 3.78 lakh tweets so far.

“Our team gets around 6,500 mentions per day in which around 3,000 mentions are in the form of complaints. We are immediately notified about the new tweet and our team chips in to address the complaints after the initial verification of the passengers. Then we forward the messages to divisions concerned for further action,” said the official who did not wish to be named. We have a dedicated team of 150 staffers across 68 divisions of the Indian Railways who not only keep a close watch on passenger messages on the social media round the clock, but also ensure that passengers woes are solved within the stipulated time or say within 30 minutes, he said.

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We do not only make sure that their problems are addressed but also try to reach the passengers to inform that what action has been taken on his/her complaint, he added. Advocating this social medium, Prabhu too in a statement, said, “We were looking for a common and transparent tool to establish contact in real time with our passengers so that we can redress their grievances.” “Twitter has proved to be a powerful medium and met our needs. It gives me satisfaction when we are able to make journeys better by our intervention. I also keep an eye on the Twitter handle. This gives me a feedback on our services and helps us to improve,” the minister added.