CHENNAI: An overwhelming majority of trains fitted with bio-toilets, maintained at two train care centres in the city, are choked with physical waste, requiring manual cleaning. This is ironic, considering that the Railways are envisaging installation of bio-toilets in all coaches by 2021, to do away with direct discharge and reduce the scourge of manual scavenging.
At the Basin Bridge yard, which maintains trains coming to Chennai Central, as much 70 per cent of bio-toilets are clogged when trains arrive for primary maintenance — a five-six hour procedure which includes complete washing of the coach. On a average, workers at the yard attend to roughly 170 coaches, fitted with four bio-toilets each, every day.
At Gopalsamy Nagar, the other train care centre near Egmore, where around 12 trains are maintained daily, sources said the scene was no different. So much so, not a single day passes off without contract worker, R Rajesh’s (name changed) involvement in clearing the clogged system. There are times when he takes out the waste by using a pair of garbage picking tongs (stick), but then life isn’t so easy. Clogging the pathway to the holding tank underneath the coach, there are several discarded objects that requires much more physical work.
Rajesh said bio-toilets can easily get choked through indiscriminate disposal of physical waste in them. “Among the items that are thrown in are sanitary napkins, cigarette buds, gutka pouch, plastic covers and liquor bottles, which leads not only to clogging but also affect other travelling passengers,” he said. Another significant consequence of the passengers’ misdemeanour is the possible health hazard for workers who attempt to remove them.
Speaking to Express, a railway official said they have initiated several measures to curb this practice.
“Public awareness campaigns are being undertaken to spread messages on the proper usage of bio-toilets. Furthermore, stickers with do’s and don’ts are displayed in coaches to educate the passengers,” he said.
However, frequent rail users said the railways should focus on periodically clearing the dustbins that have been provided in trains so that waste could be dumped in them.
Going the swachh way
■ An estimated, 4,000 tonnes of human waste dumped on rail tracks across the country
■ Under Swachh Rail-Swachh Bharat (Clean
Rail-Clean India) programme, railways plans to fit bio-toilets in all trains by 2020-21
■ Up to August, a total of 3,861 bio-toilets have been provided in 1,255 coaches, out of a total 6,197 passenger coaches in Southern Railway zone
■ Rameswaram- Manamadurai section, declared as the country’s first ‘Green Train Corridor’, is absolutely free from human waste discharge, thanks to bio-toilets
■ Bio-toilets were first fitted in Gwalior - Varanasi Bundelkhand Express, effective from January 2011