Quality of food served in trains: Railways begins live streams from kitchens

New Delhi: The Indian Railways has been flak for quite sometime now over the quality of food being served to the passengers. Even the CAG had pulled up the railways last year over the 'unhygienic' food being supplied in trains after several images began doing rounds on the social media showing insects in food served by railways.

To clean up its image, Indian Railways on Wednesday launched a streaming service on its website allowing travellers to scrutinise hygiene levels in their major kitchens. Passengers can now see in the live stream how their meals are prepared. The initiative is part of Railways Minister Piyush Goyal's drive to improve passenger amenities along with safety. So far, out of 200 base kitchens of IRCTC which is the main caterer for the national transporter, 16 cameras have been installed. The kitchens that have been equipped with cameras are located in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Jhansi, Bhubaneswar etc along major railway routes.

In May, public confidence took a blow when a rail caterer was filmed making tea from toilet water. "This step will further enhance transparency and public confidence in the food preparation and packaging process across the Indian Railways network," its catering wing IRCTC said on Twitter. Meanwhile, IRCTC has also recently launched a new app, 'Menu on Rails', which aims to check the menace of overcharging by vendors on trains. Passengers can now download the app and know the MRP (Maximum Retail Price) for food available across all categories of trains. Additionally, PoS (Point Of Sale) machines are increasingly being used in trains to check any chance of ad-hoc charging for food items.