Rly laundry association seeks relief

THE ASSOCIATION members on Tuesday held a silent protest at Rail Nilayam, the SCR headquarters here in the city.

With the shutting down of linen service in passenger trains throwing into chaos the 25 capital intensive laundries that employ nearly 800 people in the South Central Railway zone and leaving the laundry operators high and dry, the BOOT (Build Own Operate Transfer) Laundry Association has demanded that the SCR make good on the promises in their contracts to pay 75 per cent of running costs, that include salaries for workers.

The association said that when Indian Railways announced its

Covid-19 lockdown and suspended train services across the country, one of the hardest hit passenger service providers were those involved in linen bedroll services. After their services were stopped as part of anti

Covid-19 precautions on March 21 with an advice to the restricted rail passengers to carry their own bedsheets and other linen if needed.

To bring attention to their plight, the association members on Tuesday held a silent protest at Rail Nilayam, the SCR headquarters here in the city, to urge the Railways to honour the contracts entered into with the laundry operators.

As per the contract, Railways should make minimum payments for minimum assured load irrespective of linen/bedrolls given as these projects are of PPP nature.

After the Association gave a representation to Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Railways and Chairman of Railway Board, instructions issued to General Managers of various zones on 3rd July 2020 to make payments as per the contracts have been ignored, according to Yashodar Vallala, the president of the Association.

Each of us have invested up to ` 15 crore. And for instance, one of us, Supreme Laundry Force at Kachiguda, used to provide line bed rolls to all the trains which start from Secunderabad and Hyderabad stations with an average billing of ` 50 to ` 60 lakh per month, he said. He added, the other four Laundry boots are situated in Tirupati, Kakinada, Vijayawada and Nanded.