New Delhi, Sep 14 (PTI) The Agra railway division has started a unique initiative to impart sign language training to some employees of 12 prominent stations such as Dholpur, Mathura, Idgah and Agra Fort, an official said on Thursday.

In April 2023, the division short-listed 40 employees to get sign language training who were later deployed at ticket window and enquiry help desks at the Agra station to assist speech and hearing impaired passengers.

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"We realised that this has been an extremely useful exercise for divyangjan passengers and hence we decided to depute these 40 trained frontline staff as master trainers to train other employees at 12 prominent stations," Prashasti Srivastava, PRO, Agra Division, said.

Agra is one of the 66 railway divisions in the country.

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Srivastava told PTI that in the first week of April, the division took assistance from the volunteers of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of Agra district and conducted a week-long workshop in the division office for 40 employees.

“They learnt the basic things such as how to guide a divyangjan to the ticket windows, train timings, platforms, places of public utilities and were deployed as frontline staff at the Agra station. The experiment was quite encouraging,” Srivastava said.

"This is the first of its kind initiative out of all the railway divisions and we are going to extend it to other prominent stations also,” she added.

Agra station, like many other stations, is equipped with Braille signages for the visually impaired passengers and, according to her, this new initiative takes the baton of inclusiveness forward in the railways.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)