Bhubaneswar: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has installed 91 automatic sanitary napkin vending machines in different coaches of 36 trains, originating from Puri, Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam.
The installation project which started on a pilot basis from Hirakhand Express has earned ECoR lots of positive responses from women passengers.
It may be mentioned here that, ECoR is the first railway zone in Indian Railways to undertake such an extensive exercise for installation of automatic sanitary napkin vending machine in trains.
Thirty-five coaches of 10 trains including Purusottam Express, Puri-Ahmedabad Express, Tapaswini Express, Puri-Durg Express, Utkal Express, Jagannath Express, Neelachal Express, Puri-Chennai Express, Puri-Ajmer Express, Puri-Shirdi Express originating from Puri have been installed with the vending machines. Similarly, 28 Coaches of 15 trains originating from Bhubaneswar namely Hirakhand Express, Rajdhani Express group of trains, Prashanti Express, Dhanbad Garib Rath Express, Bhawanipatna Link Express, Jan Shatabdi Express, Bhubaneswar-Tirupati Express, Bangalore Cant Express, Bolangir Inter City, New Delhi Duronto, Krishnarajpuram Humsafar Express and Bangriposi Express have been provided with this facility. Sanitary napkin vending machines have also been provided in 23 coaches of 11 trains originating from Visakhapatnam including Samata Express, AP Express, Nizamuddin Dakshin Link Express, Korba Express, Visakhapatnam-LTT Express, Hirakund Express, Visakhapatnam-Gandhidham Express, Visakhapatnam-Digha Express, Visakhapatnam-Tata Express, Visakhapatnam-Paradeep Express and Visakhapatnam-Chennai.
Passengers can get the napkins by inserting a Rs 5 coin in the vending machine. The vending machine can vend 75 pads at once.
