Calcutta: The East-West Metro has hired one of the world's leading rail equipment manufacturing companies to install platform screen doors in its stations for additional passenger safety and power-efficient cooling.

Hunan-headquartered Zhuzhou CRRC Times Electric Co. Ltd is to start installing screen doors in February along the platforms of one underground and six overground stations between Sector V and Phoolbagan. The remaining five stations between Sealdah and Howrah Maidan, all of them underground except one, would be covered in the second phase.

A senior official of the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation, which is implementing the Metro project, said the Chinese company was working on a custom design for the screen doors. Delhi Metro already has functioning screen doors that prevent accidental falls and suicides.

Since platform doors open simultaneously with those of trains, they serve a second purpose: lower power consumption by way of preventing cool air from escaping into the tunnels. "We hope to be able to save 50 per cent of the electricity that Metro Railway spends on air-conditioning," the official said.

The platform screen doors in underground stations would be from floor to ceiling. The overground stations would have doors up to a height of 1.6 metres. Phoolbagan is the only underground station in the first phase of the project, for which the completion target is next June.

Zhuzhou CRRC has a Rs 70-crore contract with the implementing agency for the screen doors, a standard feature of many Asian and European mass transit systems.