Few public toilets for women in Old City

Charminar: Except at tourist places like Mecca Masjid and Charminar, there are no public toilets for women in Old City area. A recent study brought to light the stark reality of the women unable to gain much from the Swachh Bharat or Swachh Hyderabad campaigns being taken up both at National and Municipal levels.

A study conducted by Shaheen Women Resources Welfare Association in partnership with Action Aid India in the areas including Sultan Shahi, Valmiki Nagar, Nashemann Nagar, Aman Nagar and Siddiq Nagar found that women face a lot of problems during work hours, due to lack of toilets in the community and are deprived of even basic sanitation. They have to control their bladder for more than 8 hours and when it becomes unbearable, they knock on the doors of households in the community and ask for permission to use the toilets; while some agree, some do not. These were responses from Survey questionnaire of 50 young women and interview with 50 family members (24 male and 26 female), 2 management staff and 5 community leaders. “These women also mentioned that sometimes during work hours when they begin to menstruate, there is hardly anything that they can do about, only due to the lack of public toilets,” said Jameela Nishath, Chief Functionary and Founder Member of the NGO.

For visiting women or those living in Nasheman Nagar and Sultan Shahithe, public toilet at Kaveli Kaman is the closest and it is at half an hour distance. This toilet, however, is dysfunctional and dumped with garbage. Residents of Valmiki Nagar can use the toilet at Gowlipura, which is at a distance of less than a kilometre; this, however, is only for men. Aman Nagar does not have any public toilet, there is a public toilet building, which is around 2kms away and has been defunct for close to 2 decades.

In and around Siddiq Nagar there are no community toilets. It was found through GHMC website that in the Budget for the year 2014-15, Rs 7 Cr were kept aside for making public toilets only for women and out of that nothing was spent. While the details for 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 were not available online, says the Study. For pushing this important issue on December 22, Shaheen organised ‘Gender Responsive Services’ programme, which was attended by GHMC Zonal Commissioner (Charminar) B Srinivas Reddy. The official who acknowledged the problems being faced by the women assured to come up with a solution for this. He affirmed that the Civic body would come up with public toilets in Public Private Partnership (PPP) model by involving organisations specialised in maintaining these amenities. Jameela Nishath demanded that the GHMC come up with at least 100 ‘gender-friendly’ she-toilets for the sake of women health and hygiene in different locations of the old City.

BY Md Nizamuddin & Syed Mujtaba Hussain Abidi