In order to provide clean environment and smooth travel experience to its passengers, Indian railways has taken various steps under Swachh Bharat, Swachh Railways initiative in financial year 2019-28 including installing bio-toilets in 68,800 railways coaches and providing on ‘Board House Keeping Service’ (OBHS) in 1100 pairs of trains including Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto and other important long distance express trains to clean toilets, doorways, aisles and passenger compartments.
The Ministry said that it has taken some important steps, including introducing integrated mechanised cleaning is now provided at 953 stations, independent third party Survey of passenger perception on cleanliness standards was carried out at 720 stations in 2019-20 against 407 stations and 200 Railway stations certified for implementation of Environment Management System (EMS) to ISO: 14001 in 2019-20.
Considering the efforts, the Ministry of Railways has been adjudged as the best effort by a Ministry for implementation of ‘Swachhta Action Plan’, and was awarded by President of India on 06th Sept 2019, it said.
Besides, it has also set up mechanized laundries for improving quality of washing of linen provided to AC coach passengers.
It has installed eight mechanized laundries in FY 2019-20 (total 68), the railways said in a statement.
As an initiative to reduce, recycle and dispose plastic waste generated in stations in an eco-friendly manner, comprehensive policy
guidelines have been brought out for installation of ‘Plastic Bottle Crushing Machines’ (PBCMs) by Zonal Railways,
it added.
At present, around 315 PBCMs have been installed at 229 stations including several district headquarters railway stations over Indian Railways. ‘Automatic Coach Washing Plants’ (ACWP) has been installed in eight locations in 2019-20 (cumulative 20).
Further, quick watering facilities at 29 locations have been installed in 2019 -20 (cumulative 44) to reduce water filling time at stations.