Title - Railways sanitation drive in full swing

Scrap-free tracks, auction proceeds fetch Rs.55 crore in Vijayawada Division

Clean Railway platforms, tracks and surroundings will be the order of the day on Vijayawada Division of South Central Railway and it has made a good beginning by imposing penalties on passengers littering the platforms or track surroundings up to the outer signal.

In addition to keeping the passenger amenities functional, the Vijayawada Division has taken care of littered scrap material along the railway track on entire division and removed 20,637 tonnes during last financial year and by auctioning part of it got Rs.55 crore. This amount was the highest revenue earner for a division out of the six in the SCR and got the GM’s Shield also.

Cases booked

The demand for the damaged concrete sleepers was low, but now they are towing them to the nearest railway crossing or arranging them alongside the railway track for their staff put the departmental trolleys used for checking and repair purpose. These places work as spots for idling or Trolley Refuse when a train crosses a particular stretch.

Divisional Railway Manager Pradeep Kumar told The Hindu that the division had penalised 253 persons in April collecting Rs.52,650 for littering the Railway premises and now the average penalties/booking of cases were 100 per day. During current month it had already collected Rs.4.29 lakh from the people and was providing dust bins at every 50 meters on the platforms.

People are supposed to keep the premises clean and those who violated were booked extensively on major railway stations in May with number of cases booked coming to 2,139 till May 21. “Outstation or Home Signal point is another area where littering takes place during day time, hence we are fixing an agency in some places and other places engaging manpower to clean up the garbage along the railway tracks”, Mr. Pradeep Kumar said.

Coming to sanitation on the trains, the DRM said that they had engaged an agency under OBHSK scheme and four persons take care of cleaning the toilets and remove garbage from the dust bins of the bogies. “The volume of dust bins on board the trains was very meagre and that is why these persons collect it at regular intervals on some important day-time trains,” he added.