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Just 500 public toilets for 72 lakh population in Hyderabad
About 90 per cent of the public toilets under the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits are dysfunctional and the remaining are in bad shape due to the negligence of the Corporation ground-level staff and private agencies.
Hyderabad: About 90 per cent of the public toilets under the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits are dysfunctional and the remaining are in bad shape due to the negligence of the Corporation ground-level staff and private agencies. Interestingly, the city has less than 500 public toilets for about 72 lakh population, which not only causes severe inconvenience to the denizens but also violates the guidelines of Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (SBA) initiative by the Centre.
The Corporation had planned to install 200 modern pre-fabricated toilets in several locations across the city as part of Swachh Bharat Mission last April but had so far installed only 109 Swachh toilets. They too have been dysfunctional since the Corporation did not hand them over to any private agencies for operation and maintenance. The unit cost of each modern pre-fabricated Swachh toilet is about Rs 5 lakh.
As per the SBA norms, the GHMC has to locally construct a public toilet for every 25 women and 50 men, which means that the toilets should be in thousands, but there are only 500. A Priyanka Rao, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, said that even though the State government’s initiatives were appreciable, they were not implemented and most women in the city have been suffering due to lack of public toilets. Do women in the city need to protest even for basic civic amenities like public toilets?, she questioned.
Echoing her concerns, D Srikanth, a resident of Amberpet asked, "How can the Corporation stop public urination and announce that they would impose fine on citizens when it has failed to provide basic facilities like public toilets.” He alleged that the Corporation officials were hand-in-glove with the contractors and private agencies, which have been making public toilets either non-operative or poorly maintained.
When queried about the same, a senior GHMC official said that the private agencies were not showing interest in taking up the maintenance of Swachh toilets, claiming that the rate offered by the GHMC was not viable for them. The GHMC had asked them to charge Rs 5 per person but the contractors were demanding about Rs 8 per person. Meanwhile, the toilets were getting damaged.
By Maddy Deekshith
