Swachh rail survey: Ranks of Chennai Central, Egmore stations down

Chennai: Central and Egmore, Chennai’s largest A1 railway stations, hit new low in cleanliness by scoring 184 and 288 ranks in the Swachh rail survey, results of which were released by ministry of railways on Wednesday.

In a dismal response, it was found that no station in Tamil Nadu scored a rank among the top 25 cleanest stations in the country. And only four stations — Kumbakonam, Kovillapatti, Metupalayam, and Salem — ranked among the top 100. In the survey results released in March 2016, Central and Egmore were ranked 121 and 141 respectively.

'A' category station Rameswaram scored the lowest score in the state and other 'A' category stations like Tambaram, set to become the third terminal, Arakkonam and Mayiladuthurai, are among the other lowest scoring stations.

The survey was conducted across 407 stations — 75 ‘A1’ category and 332 ‘A’ category stations — in 16 zonal railways through interviews with respondents and was done face to face by Quality Council of India (QCI). Based on the score out of 1000, ranks were assigned to all stations in the country.

Respondents to the survey were asked to rate the cleanliness of stations objectively on 40 different cleanliness parameters like cleanliness, main
entry, main platform, waiting area, and parking area. And the final score was based on three independent scores - Process Audit Score, Direct Observation Score, and Citizen Feedback Score.

While Chennai Central got a higher citizen feedback score than Coimbatore, the latter fared well among the A1 stations in the state with a higher audit and direct observation scores, and an overall score on 1,000.

The process audit for Chennai Central found that while the main entry, waiting rooms were clean and cleaning staff were found regularly, main platform areas and parking lacked cleanliness.

At Egmore, main entry, platform area and parking area were found to be unclean during audits. Naveen Gulati, the divisional railway manager, said that the Central and Egmore stations see higher footfalls and may need more scaling up of resources at hand. “We will work towards improving the cleanliness at these stations,” he added.

In an RTI filed by Deccan Chronicle last year, it was found that in the Chennai division, '48 crore was spent on the upkeep of trains and stations, including salaries of cleaning staff, aid for cleaning and sourcing of cleaning equipment in 2015.

“Enormous funds are being given but cleaning works have to be carried out properly. Depending on the size of the station, more manpower and resources should be put to use,” said V. Rama Rao of Traffic and Transportation Forum.