Mumbai: Central Railway rushes to fix roof holes

A day after mid-day reported about the Central Railway's poor quality of work in fixing station roofs, the staff and workers of its engineering department spent all of Thursday plugging the holes, unfortunately doing the same shoddy job all over again.

While the station roof at Thane and some other places had wide gaps with rainwater seeping in, some stations lacked a roof entirely. This is despite station roof works being classified as important safety works by Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal after the Elphinstone stampede of September 2017.

Water pipes were sealed with concrete instead of the gunny bags used earlier. They were also fixed with steel pipe inlets and freshwater channels were welded into them at Thane station on Thursday. The debris lying at the entry/exit point of the station was cleared and the flooring, too, will be fixed soon.

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The Central Railway's engineering department spent the day fixing the pipes at Thane station

The roofs, however, were hardly fixed. Temporary fixes haven't completely stopped leakage of water. A visit to Thane station on Wednesday had revealed leaking roofs across platforms owing to incomplete or shoddy work on the pipes. All the pipe outlets too were covered in plastic sheets.

At Kurla station too, work has been left incomplete and despite the monsoon being at its peak, just the roof brackets have been affixed yet. Railway officials said that roof sheets will be placed soon.

"At stations like Vikhroli, where work on the foot overbridge is underway, the roof has been opened. But we have put up temporary thick plastic sheets and covered it. We assure to fix all of them at the earliest," the Central Railway spokesperson said.

Also Read: Mumbai: Leaky roofs show holes in Central Railway's work

With monsoon at its peak, the shoddy roof work has led to major leakages across platforms

Senior railway officials inspected the station on Thursday while work on fixing the gaps was on. On pointing that the job had been done hurriedly, officials said all work will be monitored once its complete and no scope for complaints will be left. Speaking of missing roofs, a senior official said that "a number of stations in Mumbai are being upgraded and whenever passenger amenities are added like the foot overbridge, the roof cover is supposed to be removed temporarily, but it has been found that they are never put back."

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