Brainstorming Session Indian Railway – Facility Service Companies Meeting

[box type=”shadow” ]It was for the first time that facility service provider got an opportunity to interact face-to-face with senior Railway officials, who are directly in charge of Housekeeping and Environment issues. Alok Kumar Tewari, Advisor- Environment and Housekeeping, Ministry of Railway and Arjun Mundiya, Chief Mechanical Engg, South Central Railway spoke to select service providers and discussed the railways cleaning requirements during the Clean India Technology Week at Hitex Exhibition Center.[/box]

The participants were:

• A C Sharma, Head Marketing, All India, All Services Global
• Suthirtha Sarkar, General Manager-Sales, Buzil Rossari Pvt. Ltd
• Sudha Chakrapani, CEO, Washroom hygiene Concepts (P) Ltd
• Stalin, Senior Manager Business Development and Operations, Updater Services Pvt. Ltd
• Prakash Padava, Head Operations, KVR Best Property Management
• Sanjay, Group CEO, La Mclean India Pvt. Ltd
• Debasis Mondal, Vice President – Operation, Chatterjee Cleaning Arts Services Pvt. Ltd

Initiating the talk, Alok Tewari firstly thanked Clean India Journal for facilitating such a meet, which would enable better understanding of the expectations of the railways and the service providers alike.

“As of now, housekeeping services in the Railways are very fragmented. We have coach cleaning, depot cleaning, on board housekeeping services, which include only the cleaning services. We would like to broaden the scope to include pest and rodent control – of station and coaches – as each one is separate. Moreover, each supervisor has 25 contracts and monitoring on the quality of services becomes difficult.

“We are also looking for consolidating the work and on long term contracts. We can work on a draft policy to engage some facility services in this regard with work specification, work payment, penalty, etc., in the picture.” He also stated that the Railways would like the facility services companies to be equal partners in providing these services.”

“If there is no quality delivery from the service provider, even if he has comepleted the contract, he is not eligible for filing the tender. We have outsourced only because we have manpower limitation, for work and supervision, and it is expensive too. We cannot supervise the service provider the same way we supervise our staff. So we would like you to have the system in place to ensure quality so that we are assured too. We are working on putting down service quality assessment,” he added.

Another concern expressed by Mudiya was that the Railways was not very sure about the level of labour provided by the service providers.

When it comes to manpower, the cleaning industry is prepared to set benchmarks. The age, education and the training undergone by each employee can be put forward for the Department approval.

“We believe in training people perfectly for the job. We can give the required number of people and assure they remain on site, unless there are any leave replacements. Proper training and audit can see that the staff deliver as per the requirements.”

Tewari informed that cleaning the railways is facing problems as it is not able to provide accommodation in the case of on-board housekeeping services. “So working conditions are tough. Service providers have also been cutting corners. Initially, the attendance is full. The cleaning staff does not stay throughout the journey. Consequently, the service is poor. South Central Railway has introduced a geo-tagged photo system to mark attendance.

The facility services companies felt that since there is lot of investment in the machines and organized labour, the minimum period for contract should be four years so that we are mentally ready to invest. The longer the contract period, the lesser will be the cost of the equipment. They also stated that to attract service providers into Railways cleaning, the contracts need to be SLA-based and not manpower based, “so that we know what we have to to deliver, irrespective of manpower.

Another challenge faced by the cleaning companies is the delay between submiitting the invoice aand realiising the amount.

At present, about 75 A1 and 300 plus A stations and suburban stations are yet to finalise performance parameters, qualifying criteria and work specifications.

The service providers were elated to have a direct interaction with the railway authorities and it was for the first time they “got to see the face of the officials”. Following the interaction, the Railway authorities have invited the service providers once again to Delhi to further understand the working model of outsourcing cleaning.