Hyderabad: The South Central Railway (SCR) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with State Bank of India (SBI) in connection with Doorstep Banking for direct pickup of earnings covering all 585 Railway stations over SCR. The MoU was signed today by SCR & SBI Officials at Rail Nilayam, Secunderabad in the presence of Gajanan Mallya, SCR General Manager.
The direct pickup of cash from all the railway stations on SCR as per the MoU dispenses with the tedious and complex activity of movement of cash earnings through “Cash Safes” by trains. This will enable hassle free collection of traffic earnings by SBI and remittance into Government account avoiding delay in transmission of traffic cash earnings. The MoU was signed by Dr B.S.Christopher, Chief Commercial Manager, Freight Services and J. Meghanath, Financial Advisor and Chief Accounts Officer, Traffic on behalf of South Central Railway and Surendra Nayak, Deputy General Manager, Digital and Transaction Banking Unit, SBI, Hyderabad Circle.
General Manager Gajanan Mallya expressed happiness with the tie-up and opined that such understandings will go a long way in streamlining financial transactions accounting. Such initiatives serve mutual good for the organizations involved, there by benefiting both. In the present digital age, pace of financial transactions is important and the on-time remittances will accrue gain for SCR, he added.
At present, the earnings generated at smaller railway stations each day are sent through cash bag dropped in the cash chest available with the Guard of the nominated trains while in case of major stations, earnings are remitted by the concerned commercial supervisor at the nominated nearest banks, which necessitates that Security escorts from Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel accompany the official, besides entailing the added onus of arranging transportation. The existing procedure held scope for delay in remittances of cash owing to various factors such as holidays, availability of man power & cash chest etc. The newly introduced facility of door step banking as per the MoU will do away with the difficulties faced earlier.
John Prasad, Principal Chief Commercial Manager, Brajendra Kumar, Principal Financial Advisor, Om Prakash Mishra, Chief General Manager, SBI, Hyderabad Circle and Shri V.Ramesh, GM, SBI, Network-1 were amongst the officials present.
