Next time think twice before booking a bedroll during rail travel as blankets are washed once in two months. No doubt, the blankets as well as pillows stink. But the Railways can do little as it has only a limited number of automatic laundry machines.
This issue came up during Question Hour on Friday in the Rajya Sabha with several elders complaining about hygiene standards of bedrolls. While Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha tried to pacify the agitated members, Chairman Hamid Ansari remarked “purana system bedroll saath lek kar chalna achha hai.”
Raising the issue, Anubhav Mohanty(BJD)urged the Minister to travel in three tier AC coaches to see for himself the ground situation. Claiming that he had a bad experience recently while travelling in a premium train, Mohanty asked whether the Railways are aware that bed sheets, blankets and pillows supplied to passengers stink and most of the time they are not completely dried. P C Gupta(RJD) and some others also backed Mohanty’s contention.
Spelling out the steps taken to maintain cleanliness, Sinha said while bedsheets, bed roll and pillow
covers are washed every day, the blankets are washed every two months. He said 41 mechanised laundries were now catering to three lakh bedrolls at present which amounted to 40 per cent of passengers. The Railways were now in the process of installing 25 more such laundries all over the country to raise the figure to 80 per cent in the next two years.
Responding to a query by Congress MP Vijar Darda about Ansari’s remark of carrying own bedrolls, Sinha said it was a “good advice” and the Railways will not have a problem if passengers want to adopt the earlier practice.