Vendors at rly station start issuing bills to customers

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 22

As the Indian Railways have adopted the policy of ‘No food bill, no payment’, vendors at the city railway station have started issuing bills to customers for every eatables they purchase. Now, customers are not required to pay for those items bought on trains or at stations if they do not get bills with the same. As per the directions of the Ministry of Railways, it has been made mandatory for sellers to provide the bills to the customers and if they fail to do so then the latter could keep the product as a freebie. Though the policy was issued last year, its implementation has kicked off recently.

A commercial inspector at the railway station, Deepak K Joseph, said from July 16 onwards, vendors have been engaged in this practice of no bill, no payment.

“The step has been taken to eradicate the problem of overcharging on trains and at stations. With a mandatory bill, no seller will be able to sell fake or duplicate items on platforms and trains,” he said.

The vendors have been told to make a register of receipts for keeping the records of the day-to-day sale.

On a visit to the railway station, it was also found that, owing to the negligence of officials, the initiative has partially been carried out by the vendors. Most of the vendors avoid issuing receipts to the customers and cite the reason that it was difficult for them to issue receipts for each and every item that they sell. One of the vendors, Raj Kumar said, whenever any train reaches the platform, they could not issue bills while selling eatables to passengers who were in a hurry.

Meanwhile, Joseph said, a penalty of Rs 1,000 could be issued to the guilty if anyone found violating the norms.

Earlier, the railways had made it mandatory for all vendors to put the price list on their vends to bring transparency and curb overcharging by them.