THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
With nearly 800 million passengers travelling annually, Southern Railway has been undertaking a host of new initiatives to improve the ambience of railway stations and trains. Both manual and mechanised means are resorted to for bringing about a systemic transformation in the cleanliness arena.
Cleanliness Mechanism at stations
Southern Railway has outsourced mechanised cleaning of coaches under Clean Train Station (CTS) scheme. The job will entail mechanised cleaning of toilets, pathways and toilets using high pressure jet cleaning, vaccum cleaning and buffing machines. Presently, we have extended the scheme to Chennai Central (225 coaches/Day) and Chennai Egmore (185 coaches/day). Shoranur and Erode are also proposed to be covered under CTS shortly.
73 major Stations are having outsourced Sanitation Contracts. Cleaning of Approach Roads, Circulating Areas and Station Premises are ensured by Mechanized cleaning at frequent intervals using heavy duty scrubber and driers and kept neat and tidy.
OBHS and Coach Mitra:
On board Housekeeping Service is provided in 102 trains to ensure cleanliness and hygiene of coaches in running trains. Coach Mitra scheme has also been introduced in all the 102 trains covered under OBHS scheme. Coach Mitra scheme will take care of linen complaints, water availability, petty repairs, and electrical repairs, pest control/disinfectants apart from coach cleaning requirements. Onboard passengers can SMS their complaints to Coach Mitra dedicated Helpline Mobile Number 9821736069.
Supply of hygienic Bedrolls for Passengers:
BOOT (Build, Own, Operate, Transfer) laundries at Basin Bridge (6 Tonne capacity) and Kochuveli (3 Tonne capacity) supply 26 Tonnes of quality linen (23000 sets) per day on an average. BOOT laundries are planned to be commissioned at at Madurai, Coimbatore, Mangalore, Nagercoil and Ernakulam to provide mechanized washing of 13000 additional sets of linen daily.
Provision of Bio toilets:
Out of 6603 coaches, 5443 coaches have been provided with Bio toilets over Southern Railway upto November, 2018. With this 82% of the zone’s rolling stock is fitted with the environment-friendly Bio toilets.The remaining coaches will also be retrofitted with Bio toilets by June, 2019.
Further, Rameshwaram-Manamadurai, Tiruchirapalli-Manamadurai, Madurai-Manamadurai, Virudunagar-Manamadurai and Shoranur-Nilambur sections have been acknowledged as Green Train Corridors of Southern Railway. All the trains passing through the above sections are equipped with Bio-toilets ensuring zero discharge on tracks.
The awareness levels of rail users is witnessing a sea of change. In addition to the efforts made by Railways, the success of the Bio toilet system largely depends on the co-operation passengers by not throwing any in-organic material like bottles, polythene, napkins, paper or plastic cups, paper, nappies, cloth, gutka pouches, cigarette or bidi buds etc. in toilet pans or bowls.
Rail passengers may also access All India Passenger Helpline 138 for all rail-related grievances/complaints and travel information.
