WR chief vigilance officer Gupta said that in 1997, as many as 543 members of class three and four staff were penalised, of whom 74 faced severe penalty and Rs 17.50 lakh was recovered. The figure rose to 916 in 1998, of whom 92 were given major penalty with a recovery of Rs 92 lakh.

However number of complaints about corruption fell to 1,000 in 1998 from 1,200 in 1997, he said. Gupta said that out of the 592 erring staffers, increments of 200 were stopped and 11 were removed from service.

He said WR's special drive against bogus reservations as well as bulk touting yielded desired results because of wide publicity in the media.

He said corruption was not confined only to touting but it was detected in weighing of wagons too. To prevent it, he said an electronic weighing machine was installed at Viramgam which detected overloading of rakes causing a loss of around Rs 5 lakh to WR. The extent could be bigger as the checking was done as an initial step, he said.

Officer-on-special-duty at Ahmedabad R K Meena said the field staff of WR would be given training in courtesy at New Delhi. He said seminars at local level were held every month, but now onwards, local staff would be given leave to attend the intensive training at Delhi.

About the progress in setting up a new railway division at Ahmedabad, he said the project had made considerable progress and by the end of this month, WR would get possession of the RC Technical School building after which necessary alterations would be made. ``We are in constant touch with the State Government in this connection,'' he said.