Integrated Management of Housekeeping in Indian #Railways

Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has always been emphasizing on further improving cleanliness in the Indian Railway system. He included this in the Railway Budget announcements also. To implement the budgetary announcement, Ministry of Railways has formed an exclusive wing for an integrated management of all housekeeping activities of passenger interface of Indian Railways both in trains as well as at Railway Stations. This has been named as Environment & Housekeeping Management Directorate. This was created after incorporating certain administrative and structural changes.

As a follow-up, Integrated Housekeeping Wing are also being set up in all the 16 zonal railways and roll-out plan for implementation has been made available to zonal railways. In the first phase, the integrated housekeeping will be done in Northern, South-Central and Southern Railways. After its successful implementation, same will be further proliferated to other zonal railway also. This major change will pave way for professional housekeeping service providers to be engaged with the latest appliances/techniques on the massive and sensitive job of housekeeping in the trains as well as major stations of Indian Railways, to achieve better results in the days to come.

Presently, the housekeeping activities of coaching trains and major Railway stations are being managed by three different Departments of Indian Railways. This has posed limitations in improving the standards of Housekeeping. Also, best skills and expertise available in this profession could not be deployed for meeting the requirements of Housekeeping of trains and major stations, which is a core and sensitive area in Rail Passenger service. The unification of the Management of Housekeeping activities will help in thereby synergizing the efforts as well as inputs for achieving the best results in this regard.