SEREMBAN: The Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) today announced that 210,000 of the 270,000 train tickets allocated in conjunction with the Chinese New Year season have been sold.

Transport Minister, Anthony Loke Siew Fook said as an additional initiative, KTMB will add two trips a day for the locomotive train service for the Kuala Lumpur-Butterworth, Penang destination in conjunction with the festive holiday.

"The surplus of tickets is because there are not many people buying return-trip tickets, most of the tickets heading back to the village are full, for example Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh (Perak) and KL-Butterworth (Penang)," he told reporters after the Handover Ceremony of the ETS Class 93 Train, Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) Project to the Transport Ministry at the EMU KTMB Depot here today.

Meanwhile, for today's programme, Loke said his ministry received an ETS train that has been completed through the MRO project, thus becoming one of the additional trains that will be in service during and after the Chinese New Year period.

"We have a contract with Railtech, they were given a contract to maintain MRO level four for two types of trains, namely 35 sets of KTM commuters and 10 sets of ETS Class 93 trains.... So far, including today's set, we have a total of six sets that have been well refurbished, maintained and returned to be operated again by KTMB," he said.

--BERNAMA