Mumbai's local trains get soap, water, sanitiser clean-up

Every corner, handles, seats, doors and the grabbing poles of the local trains are thoroughly sanitised

City locals are being scrubbed and cleaned like never before. The local trains in use by essential workers are being cleaned daily with soap and water along with a final bath with sodium hypochlorite.

Both Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) are running 73 local trains (702 services) - for essential workers from which 41 are running on CR while 32 on WR.

To sanitise the locals thoroughly, the CR Mumbai division has placed R46-lakh work order for sanitisation of EMU trains and cabs at seven designated spots - Kalyan, Titwala, Asangaon, Kasara, Ambernath, Badlapur and Karjat for prevention of COVID-19.

Every corner, handles, seats, doors, grabbing poles are sanitised. Apart from this to ensure the safety of railway employees, driving cabs are also sanitised after every trip at crew changing points.

"Yes, we absolutely sanitise local trains," confirmed WR, Mumbai Divisional Railway Manager GVL Satya Kumar. Officials also added that they spray disinfectants on grab poles, grab handles, coach partitions, window grills, electrical switches and end panels in all local trains on a daily basis.
A senior railway official added that railways have started passenger services in a graded manner from June 1 with 200 special trains and selected suburban services from June 15.

Drones for disinfection
In a first-of-its-kind effort, Lower Parel's Carriage Repair Workshop teamed up with BMC to carry out drone disinfection of inaccessible mosquito-breeding spots inside the workshop premises to eliminate vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue and Chikungunya.

Mosquito breeding drone

Chief Workshop Manager, Tarun Huria said, "Aerial microbial disinfection is being used for the first time in the railway workshop for areas that are inaccessible. Two drones are in use. The strategy involves employing one drone to carefully survey the inaccessible breeding spots and the other to spray the disinfectant. The drones carry out disinfection of the entire workshop premises by flying to the places as high as 500m, spraying over 15 litres of disinfectant for nearly 12 hours every day. The disinfectants being employed are also effective against 65 strains of virus, 400 strains of bacteria, and over 100 strains of fungi."

Motormen get face shields
Classic Care Foundation on Tuesday gave 250 face shields for motormen. "We also handed over 75 sanitizer bottles, 75 masks and 200 gloves to employees working in the control room as well as commercial office, operations office and Mumbai divisional manager's office of WR," Mahesh Patil of Classic Care Foundation (Juhu) said.

Rs 461 lakh
Total cost of the seven sanitisation spots

41
Total no. of trains on CR for essential staff

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