Hyderabad: GHMC, the state’s highest revenue earning city corporation, has no policy on public toilets. The corporation collects money through trade licences and tax from businesses but has not framed a toilet policy for individual shops or shop clusters. GHMC's toilet policy is restricted to commercial complexes.
Most shops operate from single rooms in Koti, Abids, Ameerpet, Begum Bazaar and Charminar, and lack toilets. The thousands who work here relieve themselves either in the open or in shared toilets.
Ms Shalini Kumar, a reader, said that in GHMC town planning circle 9 (3) on Shaheed Yar Jung Road there are a cluster of shops and heavy traffic, but no public toilet. The road walls are used as urinals. Another reader Akansha Devi added, “Children and men can manage, but not women. I don't use the shared toilet. Thousands of small shops don't provide toilets to customers.”
Workers are the main sufferers. For women, the situation is intolerable. Where there are booths for women there are concerns about privacy and lack of amenities specific to women's needs.
"The shared toilets for 2-3 buildings are also used by pavement dwellers, drivers, sanitation workers, hawkers, beggars and the homeless. So my colleagues and I stopped using these blocks. We drink very less water and relieve ourselves only at home," added Shylaja Sainath, an employee at Koti.
Experts on toilet policy said, “The GHMC should focus on becoming an open defecation-free and frame a policy on public toilets. For businesses without toilets the GHMC should construct new pay and use toilet blocks. The GHMC should use the grants sanctioned by the government or Swachh Bharat funds. It should spend 75 per cent and let the private party put in the rest to build toilets and renovate existing ones. There should be a paid toilet block every half km.”
GHMC commissioner Dr B. Janardhan Reddy said the Administrative Staff College of India is working on bus bays, public toilets and door numbering to bring about a change in the city. On public toilets it was decided to assess requirements and to prepare standard operating procedures (SOPs) for painting, cleaning, maintenance etc. The GHMC will also make the existing 275 public toilets and 100 prefabricated toilets fully functional.
