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Sircilla: Single toilet for over 300 female staff?
While the government is keen on implementing ‘Swachh Bharat’ and vowed to construct one toilet for a family of four persons, the 300-odd women employees in the government office at Lower Manair Dam (LMD) area, on the outskirts of Karimnagar have only one toilet.
Swachh Bharat forgets government offices
Karimnagar: While the government is keen on implementing ‘Swachh Bharat’ and vowed to construct one toilet for a family of four persons, the 300-odd women employees in the government office at Lower Manair Dam (LMD) area, on the outskirts of Karimnagar have only one toilet.
Due to this, they dread to drink water during office hours which is leading to health problems for them.
District Collectors and government officials across the State are busy in transforming the villages allotted to them as open-defecation free.
Some of them have a pride in announcing their achievement. Sircilla was declared open-defecation free district. But it seems that they have forgotten about this problem in the government offices.
The office complex in LMD Colony houses three Chief Engineer offices, four circle offices, several divisional offices, SRSP-affiliate offices, land acquisition department office, pay and accounts office and many more.
More than 1,000 staff works here. Besides the regular staff, hundreds of people will visit government offices on various works.
Men will go out to answer nature calls but the women have to share a single toilet in the office. Or they have to postpone their urge till they return home or abstain from work for about an hour to get themselves relieved in their house.
The senior officials never bothered to focus on this problem since they have toilets attached to their chambers. This problem persists not only in government offices at LMD Colony, but in most of government offices elsewhere in the district and in the State as well.
The tragic episode came to light when an officer threatened an office attender Saraswati that she should be served with a memo for abstaining from work. And the result, a single toilet was constructed.
Even that single toilet became useless due to lack of proper maintenance. With many diabetics among the staff, they are complaining of various health problems.
The women staff stopped drinking water as they are afraid of having to visit toilet. The toilets at district collectorate will be locked most of the time and lack maintenance.
The government employees have requested the higher authorities of providing toilets and their maintenance.
Irrigation department employee Kesava Swamy said the women staff are using the lone toilet in government offices and the men are going outdoors to answer nature call. He appealed to authorities for constructing at least one toilet.
JTO in department of hydrology Sailaja said they cannot explain their problem to anyone. 'We dread to drink water during office hours. The toilet here is sans maintenance.
Even snakes were spotted there for want of maintenance,’ she said adding that it was high-time the higher officials swung into action.
Irrigation department employee Uma Sindhoori said that she has to walk 15 minutes to go to a single toilet in the adjoining office. Sometimes, the toilet will be locked.
