New Delhi:- Aiming at making rail tracks on its network as green corridor, Railways today announced that 175-km long line was made waste discharge free zone as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission.
The 141-km-long Okha-Kanalus route and the 34-km-long Porbandar-Wansjaliya sections in Gujarat have now become the green train corridors as all trains passing on these lines are now equipped with bio-toilets.
About 29 trains consisting of nearly 700 coaches have been provided with bio-toilets to prevent open discharge on the track.
Describing it as a “Deepawali gift” for the people from the national transporter, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said, “Earlier some section in south India had become discharge free corridor. Now a section in western India has also become the green corridor.”
Earlier in July, the 114-km long Rameswaram-Manamadurai section of Tamil Nadu was identified to make it a waste discharge-free train corridor and accordingly, 10 passenger trains consisting of 286 coaches moving over this section have been provided with bio-toilets.
Hoping that some section in North India will also become discharge free corridor next year, Prabhu said our ultimate aim is to make the entire zone including tracks, stations, platforms, linens used in coaches to be clean.
Railways aims to make the 78-km long Jammu-Katra section free from human waste discharge by March 2017.
He said efforts are on to equip all coaches with bio-toilets by 2019.
Railways have taken up a mammoth task of providing human discharge free bio-toilets in all its coaches to make the entire railway track on its network a green corridor.
He further said making provisions of bio-toilets at the manufacturing stage of coaches is easy but retrofitting in old ones is a challenging task. But our employees have developed the technique to make the retrofitting process easier.”
With provision of bio-toilets in all its coaches, discharge of human waste from trains onto the ground would completely stop which in turn would help in improving cleanliness and hygiene.
Railways have already provided around 48,000 bio-toilets in about 14,000 passenger coaches.
So far, during the current financial year 14,000 bio-toilets have already been fitted in coaches and it is planned to fit an additional of 16,000 bio-toilets in coaches in the remaining part of current financial year.
Railways have developed environment-friendly bio-toilets for its passenger coaches. The technology has been developed jointly by Indian Railways and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for railway passenger coaches.
In the bio-toilet fitted coaches, human waste is collected in tanks below the toilets and the same is decomposed by a consortium of bacteria.
PTI
