Maintenance workers refuse to enter nightsoil territory

MUMBAI, OCT 4: There are a few stretches of rail track along the Central Railway which no maintenance worker will approach. These tracks ...

MUMBAI, OCT 4: There are a few stretches of rail track along the Central Railway which no maintenance worker will approach. These tracks have turned into forbidden zones and subsequent maintenance nightmares, thanks to the sheer volume of nightsoil that gets dumped on them each morning from the 7,000 hutments that flank the tracks.

8220;We8217;re gangmen, not safaiwalas, we cannot touch excreta,8221; retorts Rajaram Krishna, working on the harbour line section between Wadala and Mahim. 8220;The BMC should have provided them with toilets,8221; says a railway engineer who does not want to be quoted.

It is a combination of nightsoil, effluents and garbage disposed by the slumdwellers that have turned the railway tracks, particularly the harbour line, into a maintenance nightmare.

Some weeks ago, the Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh CRMS wrote to senior CR authorities to clean up these railway tracks or face an agitation. According to senior CR officials, it was such sustained non-cooperation from track maintenance staffthat forced CR8217;s general manager K B Shankaran to dash off an ultimatum to the chief secretary: he would be forced to suspend operations on this section if the situation did not improve. This was confirmed by the GM last week when he told presspersons that the situation on this section was becoming unmanageable.

8220;I understand, they are also humans,8221; said Union Minister of State for Railways Ram Naik. The railways had been receiving persistent demands to withdraw manual labour and deploy only machines in these sections, he told presspersons in the city on Friday.

A foul overpowering stench assaults the nostrils along the Wadala-Mahim section, the kind that has you wishing for a gas mask. And it is these paths that the workers tread day and night, gingerly sidestepping excreta, to refill the ballast that slips from underneath the tracks everytime a train thunders past.

The weekly caution orders handed out by CR are an eye-opener. On the harbour line, severe speed restrictions of between 20 and 40 kmphhave been imposed. At least ten reasons cited for low speeds are nightsoil and poor drainage.

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Waste water gushing from hutments seeps into the railway tracks, softening the soil and leading to a dangerous phenomena which rail engineers call mud pumping.8217; The ballast is displaced by a soft mud which sinks and rises each time the train passes.

And it8217;s not just nightsoil that gives the maintenance staff sleepless nights. Drug addicts and hutment-dwellers make away with the critical fittings that bind the tracks together, selling them for scrap. An engineer reports as many as six thefts of vital fittings from just one kilometre in this section. 8220;The fittings maintain the fixed distance between tracks which guide the wheel. If fittings are missing, the tracks could open up and the train could derail,8221; an engineer says, adding that policing the entire length of track is impossible.

A CR engineer indicates an illegal granite polishing unit in the hutments flanking the railway track at Wadala. Despiteseveral complaints to the GRP, the unit has blithely continued to pump out water, washing away the ballast. Hutment-dwellers make away with freshly-laid ballast for laying the flooring in their houses.

Debris thrown by the slumdwellers lands up directly on to the tracks, choking the ballast. 8220;Ballast should ideally have gaps to allow water to drain through it, but the debris which includes plastic bags chokes it and leads to water-logging,8221; says the engineer.