With ‘educate, demonstrate & punish’ formula, rly clean-up crew gears up

According to WR officials, the first step — educate — is to have a massive drive to create awareness among people. The second step — demonstrate — is to encourage people to campaign for cleanliness  and the third is to punish.

“If any person is found littering or spitting, we will penalise them by imposing a fine of up to Rs 500 as per the Railway Act,” said a senior WR official.

“We want to have a visible impact on people and help them understand that cleanliness is a serious issue,” said another official, who is involved in developing the plan for the Mumbai division.

Unlike the perception that there will be a heavy cleaning activity undertaken on October 2, officials have planned a different approach in the hope to achieve better results. Sharing some of the plans, the officer said, “While railway staff will be welcome to undertake the cleanliness drive, we expect common people to come forward and help spread the word by holding placards and counselling passengers to refrains from littering.” As a part of the plan, school students, NSS and NCC volunteers have been assigned the campaigning part of the drive.

A total of 100 railway stations on WR and 80 on CR have been identified for the drive. While the railways have approached non-government organisations already, an exact number of volunteers is yet to be worked out. Of the 80 stations, CR has received support from residents for 17 stations. To monitor and assess ‘shramdan’, 268 senior railway officials will be deputed at each station.

While cleaning activity at stations has been carried out extensively since June, October 2 has been identified as a ‘showcase’ day to involve passengers in helping the Indian Railways improve cleanliness at stations.

“We want to demonstrate through actions so that passengers understand the need to help railways improve sanitation levels at stations,” said a CR officer. The officer estimated that 18,000 bags of muck is expected to be removed from platforms on October 2. Special muck trains and utility vehicles would ply to carry the muck to designated locations before being discarded, added the officer. While ‘shramdan’ will be carried out on October 2 to mark the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the cleaning activity will go on till October 22, as decided by the railway board on Monday evening.

priyal.dave@expressindia.com