CR to rope in pvt staff to clean stations
Mumbai: With the number of commuters and train services constantly on the rise, the Central Railway has been finding it difficult to keep the big stations clean. As part of its Better Look and Feel programme, CR has called private housekeeping firms to take over the cleanliness and upkeep of the Dadar, Kurla and Kalyan stations.
CR runs close to 1,300 Up and Down services daily and carries 35.5 lakh commuters, so keeping stations clean is a gigantic task.
CR first introduced mechanised cleaning at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in 2006. Last year, CR outsourced cleanliness of the Thane and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) stations to a private contractor.
Now, it has invited bids from reputed housekeeping agencies to take over the cleanliness work at Dadar, Kurla and Kalyan stations.
According to officials, the private contractor will have to deploy high-end mechanised equipment to clean platforms and tracks. The agency will have to ensure upkeep of the ticket reservation area, foot-overbridge (FoB) and the circulating area within and outside the stations. The contractor will also have to dispose the garbage collected from the station concerned, said an official.
J N Lal, divisional railway manager of CR, Mumbai, said the contractors for Dadar, Kurla and Kalyan should be in place in two months time. These are major stations handling lot of passengers, so mechanised cleaning is necessary at these places, he said.
Asked why CR is outsourcing the cleanliness contract to a private agency, an official said mechanised cleaning needs the ability to handle specific machines. Our workers are not trained to handle those machines. Besides, the workload has increased manifold, justifying appointment of dedicated staff for a station, said a CR official.
But what will the army of safai karmachari at CR do? Officials said the railway conservancy staff will be re-deployed at smaller stations. TNN