Minister of Railways releases Preliminary Report on Assessment of Cleanliness Standards at Major Railway Stations

In the august presence of Union Minister of Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh and Union Minister of State Shri Manoj Sinha a “Preliminary Report on Assessment of Cleanliness Standards at Major Railway Stations”. Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K. Mital,  Member Staff and Member Electrical, Shri Pradeep Kumar and other Board Members, and other senior officials were also present on the occasion.

       Speaking on the occasion, Minister of Railways said that to know the real progress/assessment of any organization is to call for feedback from the users. He said that the survey which was conducted to assess the efforts taken by the Railways towards cleanliness at Railway Stations will work as a mirror to the Railways which will show the real picture of the Railways in order to decide further steps to be taken to improve cleanliness drive.  He said that the Railways has established a new Cleanliness Directorate in Rail Bhawan to closely supervise the cleanliness campaigns launched by Railways.

The salient features of the report are as under : –

Indian Railways is the third largest rail network with 66,000 route kilometre stretch covering more than 8000 stations.  Consequent to the launch of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ on 2^nd Oct’2014 by Hon’ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi, Indian Railways had also  launched ‘Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ to achieve the vision of ‘Clean India’ by 2^nd Oct’ 2019, which shall be the 150^th  Birthday of father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi.

In the Rail Budget presented in Feb’2015 and 2016, series of measures to improve the cleanliness on stations were announced to take forward the momentum of ‘Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat’.  One of the measures given in Feb’2016 Budget is ranking of A1 and A category stations based on regular periodic third party audit and feedback from passengers.  Ministry of Railway (Environment and Housekeeping Management Directorate, Railway Board) commissioned a passenger feedback survey on cleanliness at major railway stations.  The task of survey was entrusted to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), who engaged M/s TNS India Pvt. Ltd.  for undertaking this work.

75 A1 category and 332 A category stations (407 stations in all) were taken up for survey on cleanliness of stations based on passenger feedback. Additionally, feedback from the non-railway survey providers at stations and Railway officials who are part of the Service Improvement Group (SIG) at stations were also captured in the survey.

The survey was conducted through interviews with respondents on the questionnaire on cleanliness indicators, which was done face to face by survey teams by visiting each of the 407 stations across 16 Zonal Railways. Every passenger was asked to rate the cleanliness of stations objectively on 40 different cleanliness parameters.

Purely based on the passenger feedback on the cleanliness of stations and the analysis there-of, 407 major stations have been given rankings in the Preliminary Report submitted by the survey agency through IRCTC to Ministry of Railways for scrutiny and further action.

Final report is expected to be submitted by IRCTC shortly, after the scrutiny of which Ministry of Railways will take further action for improving the cleanliness standards at major stations of Indian Railways.

Click here for Power point presentation(PPT) giving highlights of report