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Southern Railway goes in for bio-toilets in trains

S. VIJAY KUMAR SHARE  ·   PRINT   ·   T+   Basin Bridge staff complain of poor working conditions

Lacking in upkeep:The coach maintenance depot at Basin Bridge Junction in Chennai where wild shrubs pose a threat to the safety of workers, particularly after dusk.— Photo: S. Vijay Kumar Amidst persistent complaints of stinking toilets and unhygienic work environment at coach maintenance depots, Southern Railway has decided to go green on human waste management, official sources said.

Bio-toilet, an eco-friendly concept of human waste disposal developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), will soon replace the conventional open discharge toilets that came under criticism from different quarters for manual scavenging and posing a threat of infections/insanitation on railway premises, the sources said.

Conventional toilets were also decried for causing corrosion of railway tracks, posing safety problems.

In an attempt to minimise the menace of open discharge of faecal matter at railway stations and inhabited areas, the railway introduced Germany’s Linke Hoffman Busch model — a closed discharge toilet system that closes the outlet in coaches when the train speed come down to 30 kmph.

“As the train slows down, the discharge chute closes automatically and opens up only when the train crosses 30 kmph. This prevents night soil litter on railway station premises. However, the problem with this model is that when trains reach the destination, the human waste collection has to be discharged in coach maintenance depots, making the workplace unhygienic. For instance, trains approaching Chennai Central/ Egmore run at a slow speed after Perambur or Tambaram. The toilet tanks have to be emptied in the maintenance yards,” a supervisor in the Basin Bridge Junction coach maintenance depot here said.

According to Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer (Chennai Division) P. Balasundar, the bio-toilet was presently being operated in the Chennai-Guwahati-Chennai Express trains. “This is an innovative method where consortium of dormant bacteria in capsule form decomposes faecal matter when dropped in toilet tanks. The system segregates waste through different chambers and finally releases a harmless/odourless liquid safe to the environment. This is a fairly successful model that will be introduced in all new and existing coaches in a phased manner,” he said.

Meanwhile, employees at the Basin Bridge Junction that houses the largest coach maintenance depots in the southern region complain of poor working conditions. Besides unhygienic pitlines (basement channels to maintain underside of coaches), the entire yard has wild bushes grown all over. “We encounter poisonous snakes almost every day. Hundreds of coaches are maintained here on a daily basis and the depot functions round the clock. Since the lighting is inadequate, workers find it unsafe to move about…,” a worker told The Hindu .

He said drainage pipes connecting pitlines to a tank often suffered blocks resulting in stagnation of wastewater. “On many occasions, we take a risk by standing knee-deep in these dirty waters and attend to repairs at the underneath of coaches. The situation has improved to some extent after we threatened to protest and represented to Chief Mechanical Engineer, S.K. Sood. Though the number of trains has increased, the infrastructure and manpower here remains the same …adding to our woes is the large number of vacancies that have remained unfilled for years,” he added.