THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With Onam around the corner, the queues for tickets at the Central Railway Station, Thampanoor, are poised to get longer. But Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sevak (JTBS) centres, the alternative ticket booking centres for purchasing unreserved tickets at five points in the city, are largely ignored by passengers, thanks to poor publicity. Even though there is a huge rush of passengers during the festival season, the centres are neither getting due attention nor witnessing sufficient sale of tickets. To avail of tickets from a JTBS centre, passengers have to remit Re 1 in addition to the actual ticket charges. This amount will be given as commission to the owners of the JTBS centres. Tickets for ordinary and sleeper classes are issued through the JTBS centres; season ticket renewal is also made available. For distances over 200 kilometres, passengers can book tickets three days in advance. Says G C Ramesh Kumar, who operates one of the two JTBS centres at Thycaud: ‘’The centre functions from 4.15 am to 7.30 pm. A maximum of 25 tickets are being sold a day. Tickets are high in demand for passenger trains. Still, many people come and enquire about platform tickets and reservation tickets, which we are not authorised to issue.’’ According to T M Sooraj Kumar, the owner of the JTBS centre at Maruthankuzhi, ‘’Even though the festival season is on, we hardly get sufficient earnings. Per day, a sale of up to 40 tickets is the maximum. Compared to an initial investment of nearly ` 2.5 lakh, we are not getting any profit from running the centre. I also run an Internet cafe, photostat and spiral binding centres alongside, thereby managing the expenses.’’ Meanwhile, the sale of train tickets at the Central Railway Station, Thampanoor, expectedly, has a very good response. ‘’Per day, nearly 15,000 tickets are sold through counters at the first entry of the station and nearly 3,000 at the second entry. Heavy rush of passengers is also seen at these points during the festival season,’’ says Sasidharan Nair N, Chief Booking Supervisor at Thiruvananthapuram Central. JTBS centre operators also complain that the Railway is not giving sufficient publicity to the centres. They say the information boards having the details of JTBS centres erected at the first and second terminals at the Central Railway Station barely catch the attention of passengers. A railway official said that they would put up another board before Onam which will be positioned in such a manner that the passengers can notice it easily. Boards can be erected at other railway stations also if the JTBS centre operators demand it, the official said.
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