In a move to seek public participation to improve services, the Western Railway had introduced ealy this year the SMS services. Lack of cleanliness was one of the major complaints received, said R N Verma, General Manager of Western Railway. “Many departmental efforts were made to bring about cleanliness but they were not enough. So we have now awarded the cleaning contract to Eureka Forbes for a period of two years.”
Under the contract, as many as 730 coaches will be cleaned in a day in yards and sheds. The work will be carried out in two schedules – daily sweeping of rakes in the yard and internal & external washing of rakes at Mumbai Central and Kandivli car sheds.
The first schedule of cleaning involves daily sweeping at the yard, sweeping of interior, dusting, cleaning of seats, cleaning of front glass of driver’s cab and waste collection.
The second schedule will be done once in 10 days. This includes exterior and interior washing, cleaning of lights & fans, sweeping the interiors, waste collection, disposal, removal of unauthorized stickers and graffiti, cleaning of stains from interior walls, wet mopping & scrubbing and cleaning doors & windows.
Verma said, “Portable cleaning machines like wet and dry vacuums, high pressure jet and single disc scrubber of reputed brands and environment friendly, phosphate free and biodegradable cleaning agents will be used to clean the coaches.” Some of the brands which would be used are Nilfisk Alto,Eurostar vacuum cleaners, Kleenal & Galileo cleaning tools and cleaning agents from Haylide Chemicals.
He further added, “Mechanised cleaning will ensure that the coaches are free from garbage, dirt and stains. The Western Railway will be evaluating the effectiveness of cleaning on a regular basis. With the introduction of mechanised cleaning, the water requirement for washing the rakes is also expected to come down by 30%.”
Speaking to CIJ, Vinay Deshmukh, CEO of Forbes Facility Services, a division of Eureka Forbes, said, “The tender for cleaning the EMU was floated in 2006. However, the period of maintaining the coaches was not decided at that time and thus the delay. This time, when WR again invited for tender, we applied for it and got the contract for a period of two years. We will have 110 janitors employed in this project. We will be using only branded cleaning equipment and cleaning agents to clean the EMU.”
