How would you feel if you have no access to a restroom five or more hours at a stretch? And, if you’re driving a premium train that has all the facilities just a stone’s throw away, with a full bladder? Most would throw up their hands and race to the nearest toilet. Unfortunately, loco pilots of superfast trains of the Indian Railways have no such luxury.
These loco pilots, vital to the smooth running of trains, have no access to toilets during their long journeys, which stretch to as long as five hours, non-stop.
There are no restrooms in railway engines, and there is no passage that leads to the long line of coaches it is attached to. Superfast trains such as Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express do not stop long enough at stations for the loco pilots to alight and use the toilets in the next coach. Besides, in a five-hour journey, superfast trains stop at two stations for two minutes, during which time they check the engine’s working.
One loco pilot said many of them, aged 40 to 60, found lack of access to toilets agonising. “The Shatabdis are the worst,” he said. “It is demeaning for us to have every one watching us,” said another driver, adding that, at present, they were reduced to a system that was “unhygienic and uncultured”. He said loco pilots do not get lunch breaks either.
C. Sunish, general secretary, All-India Loco Running Staff Association (AILRSA), South Western Railway, said their association and other units representing loco pilots had written about the issue to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) last year, and it had directed the Railway Board on the matter. The 2013-14 Railway Budget mentioned providing water closets in locomotives, but nothing has materialised.
Solution is possible: Doctor
While the Union government has made cleanliness and hygiene a national issue, loco pilots agonise as they work, waiting for journey’s end to take essential breaks.
G.G. Laxman Prabhu, urologist, Kasturba Medical College, Mangaluru, said the “infrequent voiders syndrome” is an occupational hazard for loco pilots. It makes “martyrs of their urinary bladders for public duty”. But a solution to the problem is easy: if airplane pilots can take toilet breaks, why not engine drivers, he asked.
