News
No ticket to ride – rail system goes haywire
The Railways Department is unable to issue tickets to commuters because tickets are in short supply, All-Ceylon Railway Employees General Union President S.P. Vithanage claims. He said there were only four old ticket issuing machines in use, with five workers to operate them, and because the department was 14 workers short it was getting tickets printed on new machines at the Government Press.
He said that the old printing machines could only supply 260,000 tickets a day and the requirement was about 600,000 tickets. Mr Vithanage alleged that due to the lack of appropriate tickets most station masters were left to improvise by writing destinations with a felt pen or with a rubber stamp on odd tickets.
An official from the department who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed there was a shortage of workers to print tickets. He said notes and messages were sent from station to station that commuters would be given a ticket of another station. He said that often stationmasters faced disciplinary actions due to changing destinations of tickets.
He said the Government Press was no longer issuing tickets and tickets were only being produced on four old machines. Commuters complain that tickets for Galle, Bambabalapitiya and Kollupitiya are hand-written and most of the time they face difficulties with ticket checkers, risking fines of about Rs. 2,500.
A spokesman for Bambalapitiya Station said stationmasters had been instructed to interchangeably use tickets of various destinations that have the same fare. He said ticket checkers knew if a commuter was cheating because only some stations had a low supply of tickets.
The department’s Commercial Superintendent, W.G.S. Sisira Kumara, acknowledged there was a shortage of printing personnel but said that the ticket problem had been resolved. He denied that station masters issued tickets with other destinations upon instructions.
Mr. Kumara said there were new printing machines but the department lacked workers to operate them and so let the Government Press print the tickets.
He also claimed there had only been a delay in issuing tickets during the presidential election when the Government Press was being used for the election.