The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) with the Municipal Administration and Urban Development department is transforming old buses into mobile toilets. About 67 old buses, in the last three months, have been fabricated into mobile toilets.
A senior official from the TSRTC said this is bringing good revenue, about Rs 4 lakh for each bus, for the corporation and the laborious process in clearing the old vehicles as scrap is avoided. Earlier, it had to set up a special committee to assess the condition of the bus and its spares, the front axle, rear axle, engine, and gear box etc. to fix an upset value for declaring it to be scrapped. The spares were auctioned and the bus body sold as scrap metal in terms of weight. And this process used to take months. The official said that through the Municipal Administration and Urban Development department, the old buses are now being put to very good use. He said they are placed at different areas in a radius of about 15 kilometers for the convenience of the people.
The Municipal Administration and Urban Development is also using slightly better buses, which have some operational service left in them, and are considerably economical. As such, the State Corporation is giving buses which can be operated for another 50,000 km or for a year or so, to be converted into mobile toilets. A similar project was untaken in Pune, for women, by Ulka Sadalkar and Rajeev Kher, entrepreneurs in the sanitation sector. The Pune Municipal Corporation provided the buses and locations for parking the newly mobile toilets to Ulka and Rajeev, while corporate houses boosted their financial resources through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. The mobile toilets in Pune are called ‘sanitation centers’ and are stationed across the city. It also has facilities for diaper changing, sanitary napkin dispensers and a screen displaying messages on cleanliness and hygiene etc.
