Maintenance
Chennai Central suffers from lack of enough maintenance crews, which lead to dirty and unhygienic trains. According to the Railway sources, as of July 2012, Chennai Central was 180 short of the sanctioned 405 maintenance employees, including mechanical, electrical and general maintenance, required for cleaning the interiors and exteriors of trains and undertaking routine mechanical and electrical maintenance of trains. Contracts for cleaning the station has been awarded for a period of three years from 2010 for a value of 43.1 million. In 2007, the number of dustbins in the station was 28.50 per 10,000 passengers.
Roughly, on an average, about 51 train units depart and arrive at the station from different parts of the country. Of the 102 trains, a 12 are sent during the day and another 7 at night to the Basin Bridge Train Care Centre for primary maintenance, which involves complete exterior and interior cleaning and total mechanical and electrical overhaul. The rest of the trains go through secondary maintenance or 'other-end attention' at the depot or 'turn back train attention' at Chennai Central itself. Secondary maintenance includes filling water, while the third is the 'other-end attention,' in which the train, especially the toilets, is cleaned. The fourth category of trains, such as Sapthagiri Express and Pallavan Express, are turn-back trains, which arrive and leave in a short time from Chennai Central after toilet-cleaning and water-filling at the platform itself.
The station has been divided into two zones for mechanised cleaning contracts. As of 2008, Chennai Central had about 30 sanitary workers employed on a contractual basis in Zone I (platforms 1 to 6). Zone II (platforms 7 to 12) was cleaned by close to 40 railway employees.
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