With hotels shut, hospital linen keeping Dhobi Ghats busy — but workers wary of infections
nNEW DELHI: The clothesline at dhobi ghat number 28, on central Delhi’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg, wears a drab uniformity these days -- the sterile the green and white hospital linen have gradually inched out the colourful sarees, shirts and dresses that once adorned these lines.
Manish Kumar, one of the laundry men at this dhobi ghat, says ever since the government announced a nationwide lockdown to control the Covid-19 outbreak, laundry services in the area stopped receiving clothes from restaurants, salons and government quarters in the vicinity.
That was when a new kind of clientele appeared; nearby hospitals and their never-ending supply of laundry helped keep businesses afloat, says Kumar.
“We get clothes from GB Pant (GB Pant Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research), a few labs in the hospital complex and from some sections of the Maulana Azad Medical College. Bedsheets, pillow covers, towels, bibs, lab coats and uniforms -- we have to wash them all,” says Kumar.
A normal day here starts at the break of dawn, when the delivery person drops off the laundry from hospitals. “Earlier, hospital laundry got piled up and was delivered once a week, but now the piles come every day,” says Kumar.
Around 4.30am, the laundry men go about separating the whites from the coloured clothes, after which they spray sanitizer on all the pieces and leave them for about an hour before washing them.
“We dip the clothes and linen in sodium hypochlorite mixed with caustic soda, which helps disinfect and whiten the clothes, and then put them in washing machines with regular detergent and warm water. Around five machines are set aside for washing hospital linen and the surfaces of these machines are separately disinfected with 70% ethanol liquid,” explains Kumar.
Once washed and dried, the clothes and linen are ironed and sprayed with a sanitizer once again before they are packed and sealed in separate plastic bags. The entire process takes about seven to eight hours, explains Kumar.
“We used to receive clothes from these hospitals earlier as well, but then the process was not so detailed -- we would simply put the linen in the machines for washing and after drying, send them back in bundles. The hospitals are now requesting that each piece is sanitised and packed separately,” says Kumar.
Sukhi Ram, another laundry man at the dhobi ghat near east Delhi’s Akshardham Metro station, said, “We try to wear a mask and gloves while laundering the linen, but the gloves are too inconvenient. Water seeps in anyway and the soap makes the gloves slippery. That said, we do not compromise on safety. So, all the pieces are thoroughly cleaned,” Ram said.
Although most of these hospitals have their in-house laundry services, the huge influx of patients means hospitals need dhobis to keep their linens clean.
Dr PK Sharma, an epidemiologist and former municipal health officer at the New
Delhi Municipal Council, said, “The person handing over the linen and the person washing them must ensure that they have gloves and masks on.”