Mangal Singh is deputed at one of the railway crossing gates near Mator village, 10 km from Meerut city. He mans the gate for 12 hours at a stretch, though his stipulated working hours are just 8 every day. But what irks him the most is that while there is so much talk about a cleanliness drive in the entire country, no one gives a thought to the fact that he too needs a toilet.“My quarter is more than 1 km from this gate. At least the Railways can provide us with this basic necessity here. It is impossible to go home and come back because this job has a lot fo responsibility. It’s a matter of life and death. In the morning, it becomes really difficult to manage things because the frequency of trains is the highest in the day, and it is also the time when one needs to answer nature’s call.”According to Singh, his repeated requests to his seniors to provide him a toilet have fallen on deaf ears.Deputed at Chandok gate on Bijnor-Haridwar Road, Sarvesh Kumar has to walk 200 metres from his duty station to relieve himself. “During 12 hours of duty, there is no one to assist me. On very rare occasions, I ask a trusted villager passing by to man the place while I go relieve myself in the forest. If the gate is shut there is no question of my leaving the spot, because the commuters become abusive if I don’t open the gate more than a second after the train passes,” Kumar said.Data provided by the railway ministry in July 2016 reveals that there are a total of 28,607 railway crossings in the country, out of which 19,267 are manned. Even if one goes by the stipulated 8-hour duty for a gateman, at least three are needed at each gate, which means there should be 57,801 gatemen, most of whom do not have access to toilets.A station superintendent of a railway station in western UP said, on condition of anonymity, “From Ghaziabad to Saharanpur, there are 37 gates with 80 gatemen and none of them have any toilet facility. All the focus is on railway coaches and stations. The gateman continues to suffer in silence.”Chief public relation officer (CPRO) of Indian Railways, Anil Saxena, said, “Things are not that bad as we generally allot residential accommodation to a gateman very near the gate he mans, but we will certainly look into the matter and try to address this area as well.”A gateman posted near Rampur retorted, talking to TOI, “First of all very few have residential accommodation near gates. Also, no home can be less than 300-400 metres from the gates. Are we supposed to deploy our family members in order to relieve ourselves at home?”Akshay Kumar Rout, officer on special duty (OSD) in the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, told TOI, “The railway ministry has allocated Rs 1,500 crore in the current financial year for swacchta mission but they are more in the nature of providing for advanced toilet systems in the trains and stations.”

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