STATE TIMES NEWS
KATRA: Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board has been adopting the latest technologies and taking recurring initiatives for enhancing the facilities made available to pilgrims. These initiatives, interalia, include augmenting water availability, ensuring sanitation and upgrading the power supply system to meet the emerging requirements.
On the directions of Governor N. N Vohra, Chairman of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, efforts have been further intensified to augment water supply, harvest rainwater and reduce wastage of water by taking separate initiatives like minimising distribution losses and leakages, reusing treated water for flushing of toilets, gardening etc. To achieve these objectives in a time bound manner, Governor had directed adoption of the latest and eco-friendly technologies for providing pilgrim related facilities. Presently, the Shrine Board establishments have an installed capacity of 15 lakh gallons per day water supply (between Darshani Deodi and Bhawan) for catering to the needs of the visiting pilgrims. For meeting future water supply requirements the Chairman has directed CEO, Ajeet Kumar Sahu, to initiate required steps well in advance.
A. K Sahu, Chief Executive Officer of the Shrine Board, informed that a recent decision taken related to reducing the very large quantity of water consumed for flushing of the 238 urinal pots which are installed all along the track, in Bhawan area and other establishments of the Board. At an average every flushing requires one to two litres of water and additional water is needed for cleaning the pots on regular basis. Despite usage of very large quantities of water in the urinals their functioning was not upto the desired levels as the problem of smell and malodour was continuing despite regular flushing. For containing the malodour/smells considerable quantities of chemical disinfectants were being used in the urinal pots, which was not an eco-friendly solution.
CEO stated that to better address this issue, several initiatives were taken and, after examination and trials of available technologies, the Board has recently implemented a ‘Flush-me-Not’ programme.
This is a cost effective technology which, besides saving expenditure on water, also saves expenditure on chemical disinfectants. It does not require any special expertise and can be easily handled even by the low skilled staff. Initially, trials were conducted on a given number of toilet blocks on the track and the result was quite encouraging, especially for controlling malodour. Accordingly, this trial was further extended to cover all the 238 urinals on the track. This solution has been found working satisfactorily in all the urinals.
The major benefits of this technology are that it can save 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the water which was being used earlier in flushing and cleaning of urinals; it provides control and consistent fragrance in the urinals; the solution has been found economical as it results in considerable saving for non-purchase of chemical disinfectants. With the adoption of this technology, at an average, every urinal saves around 10,000 to 12,500 litres of water in a month. Accordingly, this solution will help in saving around 285 lakh litres of water every year, which would be a very significant saving of a valuable resource.
