Velu launches ITES 'Rail Sampark' in city

Chennai, Oct 15 (UNI) Minister of State for Railways R Velu today launched an Integrated Train Enquiry System (ITES) 'Rail Sampark' here for South Zone.

'Rail Sampark', a common country-wide enquiry number 139 will cover the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala.

Various services, including arrival, departure, PNR status, availability of accommodation and fare enquiry, would be available through this system, which would be initially given to MTNL and BSNL subscribers.

The service would ultimately be made available to all customers in the country, who may subscribe to any telecom service provider, irrespective of the type of service (basic, mobile, WLL).

Railway officials said, highly skilled and trained customer-care executives have been deployed to provide round the clock service.

In addition to Hindi and English, enquiry services would also be available in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada for South Zone.

The work on implementation of ITES was based on Public Private Partnership model.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation and Centre for Railway Information System were responsible for rolling out the project across the country.

Execution of ITES in the country was being done by Bharat BPO and BSNL.

As the system was already introduced in north, west and South Zone, the service would be launched in the East Zone shortly, the officials added.

UNI