Mumbai: Top passenger associations meet CM Eknath Shinde, push for staggered office hours

Mumbai railway passenger associations have revived the staggered office timings debate by meeting Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and requesting him to seriously consider the idea in order to reduce crowding in trains.

Trains are getting increasingly crowded day by day, leading to a lot of inconvenience, discomfort, anger and fights during rush hours and more so for commuters venturing beyond Kalyan," said Nandkumar Deshmukh, president of Federation of Suburban Passengers Association.

He added that the only possible solution to control this is to stagger or change office timings so that the crowd load will be reduced. "We met the chief minister at an event in Thane last week and appealed to him to stagger and change office timings," Deshmukh said. The Federation of Suburban Passengers Association had apprised Shinde of the situation earlier.

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Abhay Deshpande, a retired employee of a state government corporation, said, "The process has to begin from the government's end as most of the commuters during rush hour are from government undertakings, units and various corporations and bodies. If the Maharashtra government does not stagger its office timings, its employees will continue to crowd trains."

The Mumbai division of railways had staggered its office timings during the pandemic. File pic

A commuter activist, Shailendra Dwivedi, said, "Staggering working hours is an easy and workable option that has immediate and generous returns. It is the state government that should show courage by experimenting." The Mumbai division of Western and Central Railway had staggered its office timings during the pandemic.

Railway officials said that staggering timings would probably help decongest trains. "After mapping is done and load distribution is assessed, we can get a fair idea about staggered timings and, accordingly, we will sync suburban services," an official said. The earliest mention of staggering working hours was made in July 1956 by the Suburban Train Overcrowding Committee.

1956
Year staggering of working hours was first proposed