New Delhi : A Railway Board member on Monday said all train coaches will have bio-toilets by 2019, two years ahead of the deadline.
“All the coaches of the Indian Railways will have eco-friendly bio-toilets with zero discharge facility. Initially, the deadline was set at 2021 but we are hopeful of achieving our target in advance”, said Railway Board Member (Engineering) Hemant Kumar.
Till March 2016, as many as 35,000 bio-toilets were fitted in coaches and over 1,40,000 more toilets installed in other coaches by the end of 2019.
In his budget speech, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu announced that 17,000 bio-toilets would be installed in trains and additional toilets built at 475 railway stations this year.
Kumar said the railways had also set a target of recycling 200 million litres of water per day in the next three to five years.
“Currently, we recycle 12 million litres of water per day. We hope to take this number to 200 million litres per day. The railways uses 200 million litres of water per day for non-potable purposes; so, at least this much we should recycle,” Kumar told reporters at the conclusion of a seminar on ‘Waste management in Indian Railways’.
Railway Board chairman A.K. Mittal said: “We need to conserve every drop of water. For washing and other similar purposes, we need not use ground/fresh water.”
The total water consumption of Indian Railways is 1,000 MGD (million gallons per day).