New Delhi: More than 50 per cent of respondents in a survey conducted in urban India by community-based social media platform LocalCircles felt there has been “no improvement” in the availability of functional public toilets in their respective districts or cities over the past three years.
In comparison, 42 percent said availability of functional public toilets has improved over the same period.
The results of the survey were released Monday, to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission — which aims to “achieve universal sanitation coverage” — launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 October, 2014.
Conducted across 341 districts of India, the survey received a total of 39,000 responses across questions, with 47 percent respondents being from tier 1 districts, 31 percent from tier 2 districts and 22 percent from tier 3 and 4 districts.
To the question “how has the availability of functional public toilets in your district/city improved in the last three years” 52 percent of 13,000 respondents answered there had been “no improvement”, while three percent said the situation had “got worse” and another three percent responded “can’t say”. The remaining 42 percent were of the opinion that things had improved.
According to the survey report, even in metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru, going to public toilets was considered “generally a nightmare”, unless managed by organisations like Sulabh International or an efficient civic body or having a system of pay-to-use.
“Many times, the facilities are so bad or insecure that people are forced to bear the discomfort of not being able to relieve themselves or take the risk of using the available facilities,” noted the report.
It further said that over 6.3 lakh public toilets have been constructed over nine years under the Swachh Bharat Mission, against a target of 5.07 lakh.
Since the launch of the mission, 4,355 urban local body areas have been declared “open-defecation free” (ODF) while 3,547 others are “ODF+” and 1,191 are “ODF++”, it added.
While ODF+ category implies toilets with water, maintenance, and hygiene, ODF++ are toilets which also have sludge and septage management.
“The big issue that a large number of people have reported on LocalCircles in the last three years has been lack of hygiene, cleanliness and maintenance of public toilets in their area, district or city,” said the report.
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‘Need to prioritise maintenance’
More than 13,700 responses were received to the question “When you or your family have to use a toilet in public places in your city/district, what do you generally do?”
Up to 58 percent of respondents said they preferred to use toilets in commercial establishments like hotels, malls or restaurants, or at petrol pumps.
Another 21 percent respondents said preferred “to wait” till they reached home or “end up doing it in the open” if they were not able to find a facility that met their requirements.
Only 18 percent of urban Indians surveyed said that they or their family members used public toilets, either paid or free facilities, while three percent said they relied on “other options than the ones listed above”.
Maintenance, or the lack thereof, could be a possible reason behind the hesitancy to use public toilets, noted the survey report.
To the question “When you visited a public toilet maintained by the local administration in your city/district in the last three years, how did you find the maintenance of it?”, 10 percent of 12,000 respondents gave a positive response.
Of the rest, 37 percent rated public toilets as “average/functional”, 25 percent described them as “below average/barely functional”, 16 percent called them “terrible” and 12 percent found the public toilets so bad that they said “went but came out without using” the facilities.
“These findings should serve as an eye-opener for the Swachh Bharat Mission Urban as well as all urban local bodies who maintain these public toilets. The need of the hour is to prioritise maintenance of existing public toilets over building newer public toilets,” observed the survey report.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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