Very soon, there won’t be any paan stains on trains in Mumbai

The next time you enter a Western Railways (WR) train and find it spotless, do not be surprised. The WR administration has appointed a private agency to clean up all of its trains once every 10 days.

However, the officials have made it clear that the final responsibility to keep the trains clean will be in the hands of the commuters — especially those addicted to paan and gutka.
After inaugurating the cleaning facility at the Mumbai Central car shed, Western Railway general manager RN Verma said the initiative was taken after the WR administration received several complaints about the dirty compartments.

“We received a lot of complaints from various sections of commuters about the dirty coaches. We realised that cleanliness was a major issue both inside and outside the coaches. Hence, we decided to hire a professional agency to clean up,” said Verma.

The work of cleaning the coaches will be carried out in two phases. The first phase will include sweeping of coaches (interior, seats and driver’s cabin) on a daily basis in the stabling yard; while the second phase will include internal and external washing of rakes to be carried out at Mumbai Central and Kandivli car sheds.

In the first phase, the interior and seats of 730 trains will be carried out every day. In the second phase, 90 coaches will be thoroughly cleaned every day. As per the contract, every single train will be cleaned totally once in 10 days.

During the last year, the city has been suffering one of its worst water crises and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had refused to supply water to the railways for cleaning work.

Though the WR administration is still dependent on the BMC water supply — even for cleaning the trains, Verma said the administration was planning to dig more bore-wells on the railway premises across the city to get rid of the problem. However, at present the cleaning will require about 500 litres of water per coach for cleaning activity.

“We have identified as many as 60 spots where we intend to dig for water. At present, we are drawing water from BMC; but with the mechanised cleaning system, our water consumption would be reduced by approximately 40%. Moreover, we have plans to urgently dig for two bore-wells each at Mumbai Central and Kandivli,” said Verma.