As Passengers Fail ‘Pot-Shala’ Test, Indian Railways Turns To European Machine For Clean Toilets

A new Europe-made cleaning machine that costs Rs 11 lakh is being used to reduce the manual work involved in cleaning up bio-toilets, Financial Express has reported. The manual work in cleaning these bio-toilets had increased due to garbage thrown into toilets by passengers. Though guidelines prohibit garbage disposal into bio-toilets the menace had affected those cleaning the bio-toilets.

Earlier the manual cleaning was also killing the live bacteria which are key to the functioning of bio-toilets. The process of cleaning was also expensive. However, with the new European cleaning machine the manual work has been eliminated.

With old machines, it was possible to clean the tank of only 60 coaches per month. With the new machine 180 coaches can be cleaned in a month.

The Indian Railways is also planning to use Japanese technology in bio-toilets on a pilot basis to tackle the issue of unclean toilets. A bio-toilet equipped with the Japanese technology has been installed in the Madgaon station and two more are expected to be installed at New Delhi and Varanasi stations.