Hyderabad: Sanitation Hub promotes clean tech startups

• The S-Hub aims to promote innovation and knowledge in three main categories: water, sanitation and hygiene

• The concept is to bring innovators together to address safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education issues

Hyderabad: The State Government is planning to set up a Sanitation Hub in the city with an aim to bring innovators under one roof. The S-Hub aims to promote innovation and knowledge in three main categories: water, sanitation and hygiene.

According to reliable sources, the S-Hub is to come up at Hi-Tec City. The primary objective of the Sanitation Hub will be to create a continuous chain for development of sanitation system in the state. It would support innovators and all stakeholders in innovation pertaining to water supply, sanitation, and hygiene.

Lack of sanitation contributes to about 700,000 child deaths every year due to diarrhoea, mainly in developing countries. The concept of S- Hub is to group together the three main components to address safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education issues to create a strong positive impact on public health.

The Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) and Center for Innovation in Public Systems (CIPS) are to play key roles as knowledge partners.

Opportunity for innovators

Sanitation Hub will be calling all innovators (developers and operators) in public toilet and community toilet space to exhibit their prototype models at the city hub.

An innovator, Suresh Mada from Hyderabad, went a step ahead by tagging his cost-effective toilets built under Rs 5,000 to the tweet of Arvind Kumar, Principal Secretary (Urban Development), announcing the Sanitation Hub.

Speaking about the proposal, Suresh Mada, said, "As the basic sanitation facility becomes higher end luxury in the current period in rural areas, most of the villages are still preferring open defecation for their regular needs as they could not afford to build a good toilet and they don't have a proper sanitation system. That led me to come up with a cost-effective toilet. All the materials I used are three cylindrical cement blocks, basin, toilet seats, tap, pipe, doors and an iron sheet to cover."

"I received a mail from the Sanitation Hub team asking me to demonstrate the model with few changes," he added.