Stepping up efforts to ensure zero toilet discharge on rail tracks, railways have added another 175 km track to the green train corridors.
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 part of the Swachh Bharat Mission, said a senior Railway Ministry official. Adding "the green corridor will be formally announced tomorrow."
He said about 29 trains consisting of nearly 700 coaches have been provided with bio-toilets to prevent open discharge on the track.
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, ten passenger trains consisting of 286 coaches moving over this section have been provided with bio-toilets.
Railways have taken up a mammoth task of providing human discharge free bio-toilets in all its coaches to make the entire railway track a green corridor by 2020.
Subsequently, the 78-km long Jammu-Katra section would also be taken up for making it free from human waste discharge and the target for completion is by March, 2017.
With provision of bio-toilets in all its coaches, discharge of human waste from trains onto the ground would be completely stopped 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 through an MoU.
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.
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