Chennai: All Woman Facilitation Centres, a new initiative of the Southern Railway and a first of its kind in the Indian Railways, manned round the clock by women staff from the Commercial and the Railway Protection Force departments provides a place for woman passengers to seek travel related assistance.

There are seven such seven such centres operated by the Southern Railway, with the ones with Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore railway stations opened earlier this month.

In addition to assistance to women passengers, it also provides help in lodging complaints with the Government Railway Police, and access to prepaid auto services, among other things.

Apart from the All Woman Facilitation Centres, baby feeding centres, where nursing mothers are given the necessary privacy to take care of their infants, have also been opened in these stations.

In Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore stations, the baby feeding centers are located within the All Woman Facilitation Centers, whereas in Madurai and Kozhikode, they are in the women’s waiting rooms.