New Delhi, July 5: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has launched a first-in-its-kind of initiative allowing passengers to watch how the food is cooked in various IRCTC kitchens across the nation. The food cooked and packaged in the base kitchens are served to passengers using the Railways to commute.

Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani on Thursday inaugurated the kitchen live streaming feature. The approval to the move was given by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal in the recent meeting held by the Ministry.

“This step will further enhance transparency and public confidence in the food preparation and packaging process across the Indian Railways network,” the IRCTC said on Twitter. “The live streaming can be accessed by anyone on IRCTC’s website under the gallery link.”

The live streaming of kitchen is part of the measures which the Indian Railways is adopting to improve the quality of food served onboard.

In the past year, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had red-flagged the lack hygiene and low quality of foods served by the IRCTC. The CAG, in its report, said the food is "unfit for human consumption".

Lohani said the Railways has taken constructive steps over the past few months to improve the food quality and maintain the hygiene standards in the kitchen. While inspecting an IRCTC base kitchen in Noida today, the Railways Board chief said it is has a unique food testing lab which is is not even present in the aviation sector. The Noida kitchen serves upto 10,000 meals per day in seventeen trains, including Rajdhani and Duronto.

Earlier, as part of the quality-check programme, the Railways had launched an artificial intelligence feature which detected the anomalies in the hygiene standard - viz the chefs working without uniforms and hats, presence of rodents or cockroaches. After a complaint is registered on the app, the authorised kitchen manager is tasked to take regulatory action.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 05, 2018 07:38 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).