Municipalities help Vijayawada Railway Division in its cleanliness drive

By V. Raghavendra, www.thehindu.com                       January 13th, 2015

Vijayawada Railway Division officials sought the help of 25 municipalities in keeping its tracks and boundaries clean as part of the ongoing Clean India Mission (‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan) and all of them came forward to make workers available and also material to some extent. On its part, the Railway Division is pressing earth-movers and its own personnel into service for cleaning up the mess.

Some of the municipal commissioners have come for inspections on railway trolleys and seen for themselves what they could do to improve the conditions around stations and tracks, said Divisional Railway Manager Pradeep Kumar.

Addressing media persons here on Friday, Mr. Kumar said on-board house keeping was provided in seven pairs of trains that originate in the division at Vijayawada, Kakinada, Machilipatnam and Narsapur and bio-toilets were functional in 168 coaches in three originating trains (Machilipatnam - Secunderabad Express, Machilipatnam-Yeswanthpur Kondaveedu Express and Narsapur-Nagarsol Express. Construction of a bio-toilet was just finished at Ongole station and another one was planned for Machilipatnam.

Vijayawada and Guntakal stations which were Clean Train Stations were paid the attention they deserved. Supervisors were deputed to take care of cleanliness in all trains that originate in the division and pass-through trains at Vijayawada and Tenali where trains halt for 10 to 15 minutes. RALLY: Nearly 500 officers and staff would take out a rally from Electric Traction Training Centre at Satyanarayanapuram to the railway station as part of the cleanliness drive which is going on throughout the country on September 30.