Initiatives by Indian Railways for Cleanliness in Trains
Maintaining cleanliness is a continuous process and every endeavour is made to keep the coaches including toilets in properly maintained and in clean condition. Some of the major initiatives taken by Indian Railways towards improvement of cleanliness in trains are as follows:
(i) Cleaning of train coaches including toilets of trains is done at both ends including mechanized cleaning.
(ii) On Board Housekeeping Service (OBHS) has been provided in more than 980 pairs of trains including Rajdhani, Shatabdi and other important long distance Mail/Express trains for cleaning of coach toilets, doorways, aisles and passenger compartments during the run of the trains.
(iii) On demand ‘Clean My Coach’ service is provided in nearly 970 pairs of important Superfast/Mail/Express long distance trains having On Board Housekeeping Service.
(iv) By expanding the scope of ‘Clean My Coach’, ‘Coach Mitra’ Service has been provided in nearly 800 OBHS trains as a single window interface to register all coach related requirements of passengers travelling in reserved coaches, such as cleaning, disinfection, linen, train lighting, air conditioning and watering of coaches.
(v) Clean Train Station (CTS) scheme has also been prescribed for limited mechanized cleaning attention to identified trains including cleaning of toilets during their scheduled stoppages enroute at nominated stations.
(vi) Washing of bed linen (except blanket) provided for AC passengers is done after every single use. Blankets were being cleaned at least once in two months. Prescribed washing frequency of blankets has been recently increased to minimum once in a month. To improve the quality of washing of bed linen, 59 mechanized laundries have been set up in the Railways.
This information was made available in reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.
