New Delhi, 2 December 2014

The Railway Board has issued a set of guidelines to all Zonal Railways for inviting tenders for engaging professional/reputed agencies for the purpose of outsourcing of cleanliness at 50 major railways station of ‘A1’ & ‘A’ categories on Indian Railways.

Gujarat’s only one railway station in this list is Vadodara.

The Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has been emphasizing on sustained cleanliness activities on Indian Railways. Some of the general guidelines are;

• The cleanliness contract should be an integrated contract covering the entire station which shall include the whole geographical area of the station covering tracks, platforms, all parts of the building, concourse, approach road, parking area. In case of an enroute station the area between the two home signals and in case of a terminal station, from the entry to the circulating areas of the station to the home signal. Zonal Railways may also include the coaching depots if they are located within the geographical area of the stations.

• The scope of the cleanliness contracts shall include all areas and aspects of cleanliness, i.e., cleaning of the entire station area including tracks, rag/rubbish picking, disinfection, pest and rodent control, garbage collection, segregation of waste, disposal etc.

• The cleaning contract should be given to one single agency and there should be no mixed system of management. Departmental staff should be redeployed to nearby stations which are managed departmentally ending the mixed system prevailing there too.

• Where cleanliness is done through departmental staff, deployment of staff should be rationalized shift-wise and area-wise to ensure that each area is attended to regularly at all times throughout the day.

• The surface of the platform, concourse area including the cladding of the walls should be reviewed and broken Kota/Shahabad stones or granites should be replaced to make the surface amenable to easy cleaning.

• The Medical Officers/Commercial Officers who are in charge of the station cleanliness and chief Health Inspectors (CHIs) should visit well maintained public places like Airports, Five-star Hotels and Corporate Hospitals to observe and learn from their upkeep practices.

• Regular supervision of the contractors of AC waiting halls on Platforms, Vehicle Parking lots, loading and unloading of parcels and catering units in the station should be undertaken.

• Steam cleaners should be used to remove stains from all smooth surfaces such as floors, walls, wash-basins, urinals etc. Use of bio-enzyme products to kill bad odour in the urinals and in the concrete aprons on the tracks.

• Pest and rodent control should be an integral part of the Integrated Cleanliness Contract.

• CCTVs already installed/ those under installation as part of the Integrated Security Scheme should be utilized for monitoring cleanliness activities.

• The Division shall prescribe the details of the uniform and the protective gear which will be have to be provided to the staff by the contractor from the first day of starting of the contract.

• The selection of the agency should be through an open tender under a two packet bid system (technical and financial bid).

Fifty major stations selected for integrated cleanliness contract are; Nasik Road, Solapur, Jalgaon, Howrah, Sealdah, Bhagalpur, Patna, Mughalsarai, Gaya, Vishakapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Puri, New Delhi, Delhi, Varanasi, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Allahabad, Kanpur, Jhansi, Gorakhpur, Lucknow Jn, Kathgodam, Rangiya, New Bongaigaon, Kishanganj, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Chennai Central, Egmore, Trivandrum Central, Secunderabad, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Kharagpur, Tatanagar, Ranchi, Raipur, Bilaspur, Drug, Hospet, Vasco-Da-Gama, Belgaum, Mumbai Central Main, Bandra Terminus, Vadodara, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Kota.