CMA likely to do away with pay and use toilets

Chennai:

Pay and use toilets in Commissionerate of Municipal Administration (CMA) could become a thing of past in municipalities and corporations other than Chennai as they would be replaced by free swanky and modern toilets catering to the needs of men, women, children and disabled to realize the vision of Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu to have defecation free urban Tamil Nadu by 2015.

Commissionerate of Municipal Administration is currently thinking of a plan to phase out pay and use toilets with Namma Toilets as they have become a barrier in attaining defecation free urban Tamil Nadu following the misuse of the contract by contractors.

Speaking after the launch of Information Education and Communication (IEC) campaign for Open Defecation Free Urban Tamil Nadu here on Wednesday, CMA commissioner Chandrakant Kamble said that his commissionerate is working out a plan in this regard. “The aim is to make people use the toilet so that open defecation is controlled,” he said.

Interestingly, even a study has highlighted the exploitation of pay-and-use model as one of the major issues that has resulted in people thinking twice to use toilets. According to statistics available, a total of 43.28 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s population lives in the urban areas and 24.9 per cent of urban households in the state don’t have access to toilet. Interestingly, during the last three years the government has released a sum of Rs 224.46 crore for corporations, municipalities and panchayats for improvement of 1312 toilets and construction of 806 new toilets.

Talking about the IEC campaign, Kamble said that CMA has designed Namma Toilet on the principles of universal design and now the idea is to have posters and banners in public spaces to encourage toilet use.

Interestingly, CMA has even conducted a study to garner the needs of people before designing these toilets. “When you are building the toilet for people you should know what they want to make the scheme a success. These toilets are designed for disabled, men, women and children,” he said. Interestingly, in the next three months, CMA will be constructing 490 more toilets across the state, says Kamble.

Highlighting on the difficulty to maintain such toilets, Municipal Administration and Water Supply secretary K Phanindra Redddy said that corporation officials should also understand the efforts made by the people who are keeping the toilet clean. “They should be respected and compensated properly,” he said.

State Planning Commission vice chairperson Santha Sheela Nair said the earlier schemes for sanitation was implemented without any thought process. She said public toilets could meet the 80 per cent requirements of the people. “For 100 per cent result, each house should have a toilet,” she said while urging the municipal councillors and chairpersons to plan for sanitation related schemes in slums in their corporations. “Planning commission will consider your request as the state now has State Backward Grant Fund for the schemes in rural areas as well as slums,” she added.

Box:

--- Namma toilets are designed to suit the needs of men, women, children, elderly and differently-abled.

--- It has technology solutions to address availability of water, power and safe sewer disposal

--- Re-use of treated water for flushing purposes

--Solar panels for toilet compound lighting and water heating

---Green technology that converts human waste into useful end products like bio-gas, compost and inorganic fertilizers and recycle liquids for flushing