GUWAHATI: The Indian Railways, in coordination with other Ministries and State Governments, is totally geared up to meet the challenge of providing protection to its front line medical workers and other operational staff persons, from the COVOD 19 pandemic. It is using all its resources in coordinated manner to create/upgrade its facilities.
Railway workshops took up the challenge and manufactured PPE coveralls, sanitizer, masks, cots in-house. Raw material for manufacturing of these items was also procured by the field units. 1.91 lakh PPE gowns, 66.4 kl sanitizer, 7.33 lakh masks etc have been manufactured by Indian Railways till 24/06/2020. PPE coverall target for the month of June and July are fixed as 1.5 lakhs each which is likely to be revised upwards. During the lock down period, centralized procurement and distribution of the raw material and manufactured products throughout the Railway network was a herculean task accomplished under testing circumstances. Northern Railway was nominated for centralized procurement of raw material required for manufacture of PPE coverall gowns which was a critical component with respect to quality. All in-house manufactured products satisfy all applicable quality standards.
To further strengthen the preparedness of Railway, an order for PPE coverall (22 lakhs), N95 Masks (22.5 lakh), Hand sanitizer 500 ml (2.25 lakh) and other items was centrally placed by Northern Railway on M/s HLL Life Care (PSU under MoHFW), for requirements of all Railway Units.
In NFR area till June 26, 2020, altogether 99,838 Reusable Face Covers/ masks were produced for distribution and 2,120 hand sanitizers were also produced for use by on-duty officials. Similarly, 4,924 nos of PPE kits were produced at different workshops of NFR for use by its frontline staff. These figures are in addition to the N95 face masks and sanitizers procured from market / other agencies.