Hyderabad: MAUD seeks report on toilets maintenance

Masab Tank : MA&UD Department issued memos to all Deputy Commissioners over poor maintenance of public toilets. It asked the GHMC officials to submit report by February 25 over complaints of non-functioning of amenities under Corporation limits.

The GHMC had installed some 3,000 new public toilets with much fanfare claiming that Hyderabad is the only city in the country with such a facility under the 'Swachh Hyderabad' project.

However, it was reported that hardly 30 per cent of the toilets remain in use, which is lacking behind in maintenance and becoming a stinking place adding trouble to health hazards of people amidst COVID pandemic.

It has been more than three months since these public toilets have been installed by the GHMC; however, most of them have been locked and had poor maintenance causing difficulties to the passersby during the pandemic situation.

The same issue was reported several times by The Hans India earlier. Taking a note of this, the Principal Secretary, MA&UD on Wednesday issued a memo to all the Deputy Commissioners of GHMC and directed them to make a personal inspection of each 'stand-alone public toilet' within their respective jurisdiction.

The Principal Secretary said, "We all know how important it is to have well maintained public convenience systems in the urban society. It is to pursue this objective, the GHMC created a sort of history in establishing over 3000 public toilets recently."

The memo further stated that MAUD had noticed many of the public toilets, either existing or newly created, were in abysmal condition defeating the purpose of their installation.

Many are not in operation; lack proper operation and maintenance (O&M), un-attended, incomplete shape, unclean and looks utterly displeasing. Issues like water leakages leading to foul smell causing inconvenience to the passers-by, it said.

The Principal Secretary directed the Deputy Commissioners to conduct an inspection and asked to report the status of their utility in the format annexed herewith. Also, instructed to take up this exercise and submit the duly filled in format to the Additional Commissioner of Sanitation wing of GHMC by February, 25, 2021.