New Delhi, Feb 24 (Inditop.com) Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee Wednesday announced setting up of six new bottling plants through public private partnership (PPP).
The bottling plants will come up at Ambala (Haryana), Amethi (Uttar Pradesh), Mal, Nasik (Maharashtra), Farakka (West Bengal) and Trivandrum (Kerala).
“To provide basic facility of clean drinking water to 1.8 crore passengers, I propose to start six bottling plants through PPP route with the mandate that bottled fresh water will be provided at much cheaper rates,” the minister announced in the rail budget in the Lok Sabha.
Currently, a litre of packaged water bottle costs anywhere between Rs.10 and Rs.15 at railway stations across the country.
“I will request business houses to invest in the PPP mode,” she added.
Besides the six bottling plants, the railways is also setting-up two Rail Neer (water) plants at Palur (near Chennai) and another at Ambarnath (near Mumbai) which it expects to commence by the end of the next fiscal (2010-11).
Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) which is developing the two Rail Neer plants at a cost of Rs.37.45 crore will have the capacity to package 4.8 lakh litres of drinking water every day.
