Lack of toilets risks ODF tag

Hyderabad: For its 9,000-km road, the state capital has a total of 303 toilets and about 800 newly built. That makes it about one toilet every 10 km, against the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation norm of a toilet for every kilometre.

That illustrates the difficulty of taking the open defecation-free tag at face value. 
A week ago, after the GHMC announced Hyderabad was free from open defecation, many social media users put up images of people relieving themselves on the roadsides.

To be sure, apart from the large resident population in the city spread over 625 square kilometres, about 2.5 lakh people enter the city daily for work, business or simply to visit. 

A large section of visitors is entirely dependent on public facilities. The number of available toilets is not adequate to serve them. The city’s population stands at 1.3 crore including on the outskirts according to the Economic Survey, 2016-17. The total number of households is approximately 21 lakh.

In a recent complaint after the city was declared open defecation-free, Ms Sarala Kumari from KPHB complained to the GHMC that the vast stretch of government land behind Shyama Prasad Mookherjee municipal Park on Kukatpally, Road 3, was a common site for open defecation.

Of people peeing in public, there is no end to the complaints.Women face a lot of problems because as there are not many toilets for them.  “Most public toilets lack sections for women. Attendants are mostly men and many many women feel shy to utilise public toilets,” said Ms Sindhu Priya, a working woman.

They prefer open due to bad odour

It’s not just the absence of facilities but the psychology of some residents who prefer to relieve themselves in the open. Public toilets being badly maintained is another factor leading to this behaviour.

“People who defecate in the open do not take their social responsibility seriously, they don’t consider themselves playing a role in the social upkeep,” said Ms Kavitha Krishnan, consulting psychologist, explaining the behaviour of those who use open spaces as toilets.

“People do not want to use toilets within the house fearing bad odour. This is not an issue in the outdoors,” she said.

Once a public toilet is declared open for use, little effort is made towards its upkeep either in terms of hygiene or repairs. Most lack of proper drainage. Many toilets do not have regular water supply, and depend on buckets and mugs.

Additional municipal commissioner, health and sanitation, N. Ravi Kiran said, “Under the Swachh Bharath Mission, a series of awareness programmes are being conducted to prevent urination in public places. Posters are being displayed to sensitise citizens about it.”

He said the civic staff had adopted novel methods to prevent people from using the roadsides as toilets. Penalties had been imposed and '38,120 was collected in April.