VISAKHAPATNAM: The city railway station will have an automatic sanitary napkin vending machine and incinerator soon. With the initiative, Vizag will be the second station in the East Coast Railway (ECoR) after Bhubaneswar to have this facility.
The machine named ‘Happy Nari’ will be set up in the ladies waiting hall on the Platform no.1 which will dispense sanitary pads for Rs 5 each. According to the Railway officials, the machine, being installed on a trial basis, will have the capacity to dispense 50 sanitary pads and can be refilled as per the requirement. Women can insert a Rs 5 coin in the vending machine and get a sanitary napkin.
The project is being funded by the East Coast Railway Women Welfare organisation under the Waltair division at a cost of Rs 20,000. The trained female staff of the waiting room will refill the machine. n incarcerator will be set up at a cost of Rs 26,000 and it can dispose of around 200 used napkins per day. “We have already installed a dispenser and an incinerator in the ladies waiting hall on Platform no.1. This will be commissioned this weekend. Depending on the response, we will plan to install such machines at Vizianagaram and Srikakulam railway stations too,” says Waltair divisional railway manager MS Mathur.