With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special focus on Swachch Bharat, Railway Minister DV Sadananda Gowda would lead the organisation’s 13 lakh employees in a cleanliness drive next month. Several other Ministries too, besides schools, colleges and institutions, are gearing up to take up the cleanliness drive across the country on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti.
Gowda will take up the broom on October 2 accompanied by MoS Railways Manoj Singh and the entire Railway Board. “All our 13 lakh employees — including Board members and myself — will be participating in the cleanliness campaign at various stations on October 2,” Gowda said at a Press conference where he also talked about the national transporter’s 100 days achievement.
The Railway Minister flanked by Sinha and Chairman Railway Board Arunendra Kumar by his side, said the drive will focus more on shramdaan (voluntary labour) rather than just awareness campaign and all senior officers of the Board have been assigned various zones and divisions for participation and monitoring the campaign.
Cleanliness is a major issue for Railways as majority of the complaints are either related to unclean coaches and platforms or catering service. “We have received a large number of complaints on cleanliness issues at stations and in trains. A series of steps have been taken to improve cleanliness and we have earmarked 40 per cent more fund allocations than the last year for this,” he said.
The Minister said, a separate department is being set up to manage station to Railway-level cleanliness. Referring to the problem of discharge of waste on rail track, Gowda said Railways will install bio-toilets in all coaches to prevent it.
Earlier, Gowda counted on various initiatives taken during his regime to improve the functioning and performance of Railways ever since Modi Government came to Centre. He said that the decision to allow 100 per cent FDI in the rail sector would be of benefit in the big ticket projects like high-speed services and Dedicated Freight Corridor as well as in capacity augmentation.