Featured in DT NEXT

CHENNAI: To overcome gender stereotype and inspire women, the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) will launch a digital campaign, ‘Women in Sanitation’, on the occasion of International Women’s Day that falls on March 8, featuring women, from various parts of the country.

Starting Wednesday, the group will share videos every month on social media platforms. These will showcase women sanitation professionals, who will candidly share their journeys, the challenges they faced along the way, and the ways in which they overcame them.

The four-year-old campaign believes that women’s issues should not get the spotlight merely once a year on Women’s Day, but be a continuing discourse between women professionals and their allies.

“We have featured more than 30 professionals in the last three years. The roles in the sanitation sector are stereotyped by gender. It will inspire women who want to take up a career in sanitation,” said Abhilaasha, specialist of TNUSSP.

The aim of the campaign is to ask the viewers to stop and reflect on what additional support is required for women professionals to meet the equity in leadership, representation and visibility.

“As many as 30 videos will feature women sanitation workers, where they speak about the roles and challenges in the field. Unlike the usual videos, it will be inspirational for others. These women will explain the challenges they faced along their way and the bold ways in which they overcame them. The sanitation workers are from Tamil Nadu and other states of the country, Nepal, Africa, and South America,” said another volunteer from TNUSSP.

TNUSSP has collaborated with organisations around the world to bring forth films and discussions that are centered around the powerful stories of women sanitation professionals. The first film of the series will be launched on Wednesday on the organisation’s YouTube handle ‘tnussp9401’.

The women candidly share their journeys, the challenges they faced, and the ways in which they overcame them

Featured in THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

CHENNAI: Back in my hometown in West Africa, sanitation is a big issue as the outbreak of diseases and cholera are common,” explains junior researcher Ibrahim B Bangura. He has just returned to the city after 10 knowledge-packed days of visiting fecal waste treatment plants and speaking to government officers and sanitation workers across various cities, including Tiruchy and Thanjavur.

Post his tour, the researcher from Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre reveals he enjoyed his stay in the country. Determined, he aims to return to his country and nudge his government into tackling the sanitation question, reminding them that any conversation on health cannot leave out the matter. From February 9-16, organisations such as OVERDUE, and L’être égale among others participated in this exercise hosted by the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS)-ledTamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP).

Before Ibrahim leaves, he makes his first visit to the Anna Centenary Library on Thursday evening and joins other delegates from seven African countries to discuss their tour and the often-flushed away topic — the public goal of sanitation in cities. Surrounded by free open spaces and nine glorious floors of various texts, the library — accessible to all — welcomes all stakeholders, especially citizens, to the discussion on basic development.

Sanitation is key to development and a basic part of our lives, the crowd is firmly reminded by Kavitha Wankhade, project director of TNUSSP. Throwing open the panel discussion ‘Just Sanitation: Insights from Indian and African Cities’, she says “there’s always someone to take care of waste, you flush it off and you don’t care. Often, the sanitation question comes back to caste and race. The first thing citizens can do is educate themselves about waste as they have a great role to play in societal change.” She adds that the conversation should move beyond toilet access and while it remains necessary, it is not sufficient without piped sewage or fecal sludge management.

Universal sanitation was well-overdue in the ‘80s, but decades later we are still talking about it, remarks professor Adriana Allen of University College London and OVERDUE project leader. Adriana says the project aims to tackle the taboos of sanitation. “We want to trigger and frame conversation around deficit infrastructure.”

Unfeasible solutions

Tanzania-based Dr Tim Ndezi from the Center for Community Initiatives graduated 30 years ago from a civil engineering course and later found a gap between his education and on-ground issues. “The sophisticated solutions gave the assumptions that people lived in well-designed areas with access to roads. But during my first assignment, I realised cities in Tanzania are growing in big ways, more than 70-80% live in informal settlements and it’s congested. Researchers must be trained to be innovative or flexible.” At a governance level, he adds sanitation — which has no home and is caught between ministries of health and water — needs a separate sector.

Sanitation is a new topic in Mozambique explains Hélder Domingos, Association FACE for Water and Sanitation. “Often, projects build big toilets, infrastructure, canals, and drainage. The challenge for the local government is maintenance…the municipality lacks the space to tell the World Bank that we appreciate the solution but want to do things our way.”

The government spends less than 0.02% of the budget on sanitation, explains Braima Koroma from the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre. The researcher stressed the need for community-building programmes and resource mobilisation. Braima notes that “infrastructure in the cities of Tamil Nadu has been planned and designed to accommodate future needs.”

Role of Women

Lauding Tamil Nadu’s subsided schemes and clean public toilets, journalist Astrid Mujinga mentions the condition was different back in Africa. The president of the Cord of Congolese Women for the Equilibrium of Households/Gender says “our state built three public toilets but soon, they were not free or maintained well. Money disappears and it is shared by ‘those who look after the toilet’ here.” Responding to a question on political action, she adds that sanitation is rarely sanctioned funds and is never seen as a priority.

Astrid flags the issue of girls being taught to clean and work with sanitation at home and the neighbourhood level. “We’re not advocating for them to climb the ladder of sanitation. We need to ensure that girls don’t get married too young and cannot pursue studies, we need to educate them to study, embrace careers and help them go beyond cleaning and become engineers. Before that, we need to put preconditions,” she says.

Ndeye Penda Diouf from Observatory for Gender and Development in Saint Louis cites a study her institution did in 2016. “We did a citizen-based budget of the municipality and realised sanitation wasn’t taking gender or children on board. One thing we decided to do is make visible the invisible work of women.”

As dialogues on sanitation come to a close, Kavitha reiterates that the conversations on the issue must travel beyond words like effluent and waste management. Claudy Vohe, a translator on the panel, says that sanitation work, usually done by communities from precarious classes, should be considered a profession and not just an occupation. “There’s a need to de-stigmatise the work and value the service socially and economically.”

As the researchers and crowds leave the library, the question of the choice of location lingers. When asked, Abhilaasha from IIHS tells CE that choosing the library was a conscious decision. “Urban sanitation is a public good and it is important to have two players, the government and citizens, engaged and also (it is important) to know that cross-learning is happening between players.”

Data point: As per a TNIE report dated 23 April, 2022, in the last 29 years, at least 219 people have lost their lives while cleaning the sewers in Tamil Nadu.

Featured in DT NEXT

CHENNAI: The State Government has been working towards ensuring inclusive urban sanitation practices and in order to study the same, a delegation of sanitation professionals from seven African countries toured parts of Tamil Nadu from February 9-16, 2023.

The team studied the sanitation model being implemented in urban locations of the State and they will be replicating the same system in their local context. Based on the same, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements led Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) organised a panel discussion on “Just Sanitation for all: Insights from Indian and African Cities” on Thursday.

“We see that the sanitation practices are a priority in the urban settings here. We have seen that the sanitation model is very sophisticated and holistic here. India is investing in full cycle of sanitation,” said Daniel Mukeba, Director of the Institute superieur d’etudes commericales et financieres a Bukavu.

As part of the programme, delegates were given orientation on the principles of Citywide Inclusive Sanitation and the team visited improved community toilets. They studied the scaling and institutionalising of fecal sludge management, visited treatment and containment facilities and also interacted with government officers, sanitation workers and other groups working in the sanitation sector.

Braima Koroma from the Sierra Leone Urban Research Center, Freetown, Sierra Leone, said that the infrastructure in the cities of Tamil Nadu has been planned and designed to accommodate future needs as the cities were planned. He also noted that in Tamil Nadu, the team observed strategic infrastructure planning with sustainable operation and maintenance models and participation of women in this sector is noteworthy.

Featured in THE TIMES OF INDIA

TRICHY: A team of officials from National Institute of Urban Affairs comprising bureaucrats and senior officials representing urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand visited waste management infrastructure in Trichy and Tiruvarur districts recently. The team visited pilot projects initiated by Tamil Nadu urban sanitation support programme (TNUSSP) and city-wide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) to understand inclusive practices implemented through engineering interventions for urban poor and people with disabilities to emulate the same in their local bodies.

The inclusive sanitation approach of Trichy city taken up under TNUSSP and the corporation was explained by technical experts. Around 19 officials, including additional directors, engineers and representatives of municipal councils engaged in Swachh Bharat mission in five states, visited the city. The rehabilitation project improving the condition of a septic tank in one of the community toilets at RMS Colony in E Pudur was explained to the visitors. The team was told that soil and water pollution due to the toilet’s containment was cleared after the infrastructure upgrade. Improvement measures made at the decanting station in Khajamalai were also explained.

The visitors interacted with different categories of sanitation workers and poor households to understand the livelihood and occupational well-being activities carried out under inclusive sanitation programmes. Trichy is one of four cities in India and the only one from Tamil Nadu selected under CWIS, a project to evolve the best sanitation model for sustainable living. The team also visited the faecal sludge waste management infrastructure in Thuraiyur town in Trichy district and Mannargudi town in Tiruvarur.

Featured in TH

A delegation of researchers and sanitation professionals from seven African countries landed in Chennai on Thursday to learn about Tamil Nadu’s sanitation model, study its pioneering practices and take home systems that can be replicated in their local context.

Organisations such as OVERDUE (with researchers from the University College London, U.K., and stakeholders in seven African cities from Mozambique to Sierra Leone and Tanzania), L’être égale, Cord of Congolese Women for the Equilibrium of Households/Gender in Action (Democratic Republic of Congo), Gender, Parity and Women Leadership (Ivory Coast), SiMIRALENTA (Madagascar) and Observatory for Gender and Development of Saint Louis (Senegal) are partaking in this learning exercise hosted by the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS).

In the two-week programme, they will get to understand the principles of Citywide Inclusive Sanitation, visit improved community toilets under the programme, study the scaling and institutionalising of faecal sludge management (FSM), visit treatment and containment facilities and interact with sanitation workers and women’s groups involved in the processes.

“The value of being here together is to learn from the context in which we see a lot of similarities. We have on the one hand a historical bias towards a great system that serves a minimal percentage of the population. This is part of the colonial legacy where we have two tiers of cities and systems; what used to be the infrastructure to serve the white population now serves mostly the wealthy. Typically, we find in these (African) cities that 80% of investments serve about 20% of the population. What we want is to have more elements to wield the case for a very different way of advancing just sanitation. We want to go beyond this idea that it is only about access to more adequate toilets; it is only a small part. Working throughout the whole sanitation service chain is essential even to close the loop,” says Adriana Allen, Development Planning Unit, UCL, and head of OVERDUE project.

Ms. Allen points out that there are very few initiatives across the world that have set a precedent at scale, like Tamil Nadu’s sanitation model. “You either find initiatives that work on inclusive sanitation but only in one-off cases or one that is working on scaling up sanitation very much with certain biases. So having a progressive agenda on sanitation that can talk to gender, talk to investment and have the ambition to implement and change policy, and have this constant translation of policy to practise is unique,” she details as reasons for wanting to study this programme.

While Tamil Nadu may not rank on top of the Swachh Bharat list of clean States, it is the first State to draft and implement operative guidelines for septage management. Rules for this came into effect earlier this month. It is also one of the first States that looked into the entire sanitation chain at the policy level — instead of just focusing on public/community toilets as deliverables, points out Kavita Wankhade, Head – Practice (Governance and Services), IIHS.

IIHS, through its technical support unit titled Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP), is facilitating this exchange with the African delegation.

Full Chain Covered

“The key thing is that sanitation is a full chain — there are toilets, the faecal waste has to be collected and disposed of. Tamil Nadu has tried to do the whole chain and it has done it at scale. Just in terms of population, we have already covered (within the sanitation chain) 15 million; that is not a small number,” she points out.

Ms. Wankhade credits the State for exploring different methods of waste processing and disposal to suit the needs of diverse demographics — high-density/low income settlement area to peri-urban to rural communities.

Tamil Nadu is pioneering in certain aspects of sanitation management. “One is making use of existing facilities in the form of STPs (sewage treatment plants) and using them to process faecal sludge with certain infrastructure modifications. Tamil Nadu has been doing it for decades. Second is the cluster approach, where one FSTP (faecal sludge treatment plant) serves several urban local bodies. Now, T.N., is also talking about integrating rural local bodies like that,” she says.

OVERDUE and other organisations have experimented with innovative solutions tailor-made for their needs. Adriana mentions Flexi Funds, which allows various levels of subsidies to make sanitation facilities affordable across the board, and simplified sewer systems, which is a much more flexible option in places where only 1% to 25% of households are connected to traditional systems of disposal. With this learning programme, they are hoping to address both capacity building and advocacy, where their work with local governments (particularly women mayors across Africa) can benefit.

Featured in Firstpost

Universal access to safely managed sanitation is a human right. It’s also a core public service, critical to building resilient cities and empowering communities. However, 3.6 billion people globally lack access to safely managed sanitation services. This exposes them to increased health risks and gendered violence.

In 2002, the UN’s Millennium Development Goal 7 aimed to halve the population without access to basic sanitation services by 2015. This target was missed by a margin of nearly 700 million.

In India, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), launched in 2014, accelerated our journey towards safe sanitation. Now, we have progressed to SBM 2.0, for which safely managed sanitation is a priority.

The next milestone in India’s sanitation journey: City-wide inclusive sanitation

Over the past few years, significant progress has been made towards approaches focused beyond infrastructural sanitation goals, towards the more sustainable approach of City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS). CWIS stands on the key principles of ensuring all citizens have access to services targeted at safely managing human waste.

India is home to four out of eight CWIS cities in the world – Narsapur, Trichy, Wai and Warangal. In Trichy, CWIS is being implemented by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), a national education institution committed to the equitable, sustainable and efficient transformation of Indian settlements.

Around 81 per cent of households in Trichy currently have individual toilets, and 33 per cent have underground drainage connections. It has 54 desludging operators (DSOs), who own a total of 72 cesspool trucks. There’s one sewage treatment plant with 88 MLD capacity. These interventions focus on improved desludging services, the safety and rights of sanitation workers, and dignified livelihood opportunities.

Enabling equitable and sustainable service delivery for urban poor communities

Ensuring toilet access and improving sanitation services for low-income communities emerged as a priority in Trichy. Recognising the need for the fair distribution of quality services to marginalised communities, the Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) City Municipal Corporation (TCC) identified 1,900 households with space available to construct Individual Household Latrines (IHHL) under SBM-Urban.

TCC further implemented initiatives such as installing Community and Public Toilet (CT/PT) features like sanitary pad vending machines and incinerators for the safe disposal of menstrual waste. Social audits and periodic O&M assessments were introduced to ensure that services are gender-friendly and reach the most vulnerable. Septic tanks with improved treatment systems and an earthworm-based bioreactor effluent treatment were also piloted in a few community toilets to identify the maximum acceptable load for safe containment, thereby promoting safe Faecal Sludge and Septage (FSSM) practices.

TCC is now in the process of scaling such technical solutions across the city. Trichy also addressed unsafe disposal practices through the Standard License Agreement, which enabled smooth and improved functioning of desludging operations. It mandated load disposal only at prescribed decanting stations, initiated annual license renewal, and allowed only TCC-licensed DSOs to operate desludging trucks.

Nurturing a dignified workplace for service providers

The city of Trichy identified the crucial need to recognise, empower and establish safer working conditioners for sanitation workers. To promote equity and safety of sanitation workers, awareness campaigns detailing sanitation workers’ entitlements were held, and mechanisation of services was promoted to ensure that they are not exposed to hazardous situations.

Informal sanitation workers were registered under the Tamil Nadu Manual Workers Welfare Board under the Labour department and Sanitation Workers Board under Tamil Nadu Adhi Dravidar Housing and Development Corporation (TAHDCO), an initiative that established them as sanitation “professionals.” Based on key learnings from the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) study conducted by IIHS, appropriate safety tools and equipment, emergency protocols, and gender-differentiated PPE kits were developed.

Customised first-aid training for sanitation workers and DSOs, including sensitisation sessions on the safe disposal of fecal sludge, were also conducted to build capacity and increase the uptake of safety measures amongst service providers. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed among urban local bodies and private sector charitable hospitals which institutionalised health camps for sanitation workers and their families. These initiatives directly impact the lives of sanitation workers and enable the growth of a dignified workplace for service providers.

Solutions to integrate gender mainstreaming in service delivery

Gender mainstreaming in sanitation services emerged as a priority area for the city, with focus on enabling women sanitation workers.

In an effort to mainstream and empower women sanitation workers as entrepreneurs and service providers, IIHS-led CWIS built the capacities of 50+ women on entrepreneurial skillsets that enabled them to identify business opportunities in the sector, and trained them in services which improve menstrual product disposal.

To further scale socio-economic development opportunities, 550+ informal women sanitation workers across 57 self-help groups were trained on group dynamics, record keeping, revolving fund handling and enterprise development, and linked with the National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM).

CWIS efforts have also made huge strides towards inclusive sanitation for trans communities. This was done by creating exclusive facilities for trans people, sensitising caretakers of CT/PTs and concerned officers from TCC to ensure that trans people can access sanitation facilities as per the gender they identify with, and also appointing trans persons as caretakers in some CT/PTs.

Implementation of CWIS practices in Trichy has resulted in sanitation services reaching the most marginalised and vulnerable communities and creating safer service delivery by widening the focus from infra delivery to service delivery. It has also emerged as a multi-dimensional approach that enabled solutions required to solve for rapid urbanisation and to empower service providers, i.e., sanitation workers. The learnings and challenges from Trichy can be utilised to further scale CWIS practices across India, build resilient cities and accelerate India’s contribution towards SDG Goal 6 of sustainable and safe sanitation.

IIHS is a member of the National Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (NFSSM) Alliance, a collaborative body driving the discourse of Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) in India.

Niladri Chakraborti is a Senior Lead in Practice at IIHS and heads the City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation Program (CWIS) in Trichy. Sugantha Priscilla is a senior specialist in social development at IIHS with extensive experience in promoting economic empowerment of women and inclusive growth of societies. Views expressed are personal.

Featured in THEWEEK

Fourth in series of seminars on ‘We Speak Too, By Sanitation Workers’ held in city

“I was studying in Class 5, and I saw my father struggling with family expenses. I decided to support my father and family and thus became a waste-picker,” said Asha Paul, a waste-picker, during the event ‘We speak too by Sanitation Workers’ in Bhopal recently.

Asha spoke about the ongoing threats faced by waste-pickers. According to her, privatization of waste management is the biggest threat to the livelihood of waste-pickers. ‘We Speak Too, by Sanitation Workers’ is a series of curated, multi-city seminars that motivate and encourage a broad spectrum of sanitation workers to speak up and voice their concerns.

The fourth edition of the series was held in Bhopal, with seven sanitation workers—Asha Paul, Baji Bai, Dilip Ingale, Harilal Balmiki, Jyoti Ingale, Kamlesh Balmiki and Sunil Dawade—as panelists. They spoke on the theme ‘The City and Us: Transitions’. Researcher and social worker Javed Anis moderated the session.

Panelist Santosh Kanare, a septic cleaner, reflected on the relationship of caste and sanitation work and said, “People do not pay us in hand, they will place the cash somewhere and ask us to pick the cash. It is like they do not want to touch us.”

Anis posed questions about the nature of sanitation work, threats and challenges faced by sanitation workers to the panelist. The panelist answered the questions with the stories of their lives. Jyoti Ingale (a door to door waste collector) demanded permanent employment and provision of weekly off for sanitation workers having contractual work arrangements. Jyoti shared that sanitation workers do not get even a single day off. They are expected to work for all the seven days of the week and thirty days of the month.

Hari Lal Valmiki, a septic tank cleaner, talked about occupational safety. He mentioned that 4 people died because of the fumes while cleaning a septic tank. Since then, he is scared to do the septic tank cleaning. Dilip Ingale spoke about the low income and how arbitrary deductions are made by the contractor who employs them. All the narratives of panelists, sanitation workers whether in contractual or informal employment, emphasized that municipal authorities do very little for the sanitation workers, a note by the organisers said.

The seminar was organised by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS)-led Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) and the Alliance of Indian Waste Pickers (AIW) with an aim to create a platform for sanitation workers to tell their stories and amplify their voices. Janvikas Society’s unit in Bhopal, SAMMAN – Bhopal and the Bhopal School of Social Sciences were the local event partners. More than a hundred students, representatives of various social welfare organizations and citizens participated in the seminar.

Featured in CITIZEN MATTERS

Access to sanitation is a human right, according to the United Nations. But when we conducted a spot-check of some public toilets in Chennai, not all of them were accessible, safe and usable.

While the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has made sure that the public toilets are free to use, many people do not yet have complete physical access to toilets or a safe and clean set-up to use with dignity.

For instance, 128 families of around 400 people in Kannappar Thidal use the community toilet with four usable cubicles for women and six for men.

Currently, there are 812 toilets across the city, all under GCC. Some toilets with high footfall like the ones near beaches and transit stops are open round the clock, while some of them have timings. Zonal officials decide the timings of the toilets in their respective zones.

But GCC says it has a plan to revamp Chennai’s many public toilets that are in dire need of attention.

Public toilets and open defecation in Chennai

Even as the Greater Chennai Corporation claims Chennai to be open defecation-free and has applied for a three-star rating in Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0, the reality seems otherwise. Many areas across Chennai have seen open defecation in recent times.

“Construction labourers among other workers treat Korattur lake as a large open toilet,” says S. Sekaran, the secretary of Korattur Aeri Padukappu Makkal Iyakkam (KAPMI).

“There are no public toilets in our area. I have heard that workers do their business behind garbage bins,” says DK Sivakumar, the vice president of the AGS Colony RWA in Velachery.

Manali also has a stretch where one can see defecation near the road.

“The main problem to combat open defecation is the numbers. There are not enough toilets for a large number of people in some communities,” says Ganga Dileep C, Founder-CEO and Principal Architect and Urban Designer at Recycle Bin, an NGO and consulting firm that has also been working on public toilets in Chennai.

“For bathing and washing, people living in slums prefer to do it near their houses. For urinating also, people use their houses- they dig a hole in their house that connects to the sewer or stormwater drain,” says Ganga. “Better operation and maintenance of the limited number of public toilets can also increase patronage, reducing open defecation instances.”

In a survey conducted by Recycle Bin, they observed that open defecation was very prevalent among the babies of the slum on Pumping Station Road. “Even one-year and two-year-old babies are kept outside their houses. Moreover, toilet training is missed out. If we look at younger school-going kids, diarrhoea is very common and open defecation is a cause. So, Recycle Bin renovated the community children’s toilet with open and closed cubicles,” describes Ganga. “So, this initiative is to bring toddlers who are defecating in the open to the toilets.”

“When refurbishment works are done on the toilets, we keep at least one toilet open for people to use, to prevent open defecation,” says Donata Mary Rodrigues, Senior Consultant at Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP). TNUSSP has piloted operations and maintenance models for 11 toilets in zones 13 and 14.

Challenges in running public toilets in Chennai

Maintenance of public toilets comes with myriad issues across Chennai, leading to open defecation as the toilets are not fit for use.

Locked toilets: Experts say that sometimes those toilets could be maintained by solid waste management workers. When they are not around, they might close the toilets, making the inaccessible to the general public.

Water availability not guaranteed: “Sometimes the bore gives up, and we have to make alternate arrangements for water. One of our toilets is facing that challenge. Also, we have water metres in our toilets to understand the trends in water usage,” says Donata.

Sewage blockage: “In Chennai, Metro Water maintains the sewerage while GCC maintains the toilets. Converging with both departments is a bit hard,” says Donata.

User behaviour: “People do not always use the toilets responsibly. There are some cases of vandalism too. Sometimes they press the flushes hard and tend to break them. However, vandalism has reduced greatly in our toilets. So, we are also working to change the user behaviour of the people,” says Donata.

Experts also point out other hindrances that users cause, especially vandalism acts are some of the key reasons for the poor state of public toilets. “Sometimes people consume alcohol and throw the bottles inside the flush. Sometimes toilet cubicle doors and fixtures are broken, especially in community toilets,” says Ganga.

“To prevent vandalism, it is good to have CCTV cameras outside the toilets,” notes Donata.

Public toilet maintenance models piloted in Chennai

In January 2022, the TNUSSP, the technical support unit of the State Municipal Administration and Water Supply department assessed the status of the then-situation of 62 toilets in zones 5, 6, 9, 10, 13 and 14.

TNUSSP is part of the committee that gave inputs for the request for proposal in Phase 1 of the PPP project stated above.

Public toilets in Chennai sometimes suffer from a lack of maintenance personnel in the toilets, no proper lighting and unavailability of water. Other times, they are even locked, as we saw in the photo story. Another issue was that the maintenance personnel of some toilets were unofficially collecting money, as stated in a press release by GCC.

After the assessment, the operations and maintenance models for 11 toilets were evolved.

“Zone 13 toilets had sewerage, while zone 14 did not,” says Donata. “The reason for taking non-sewered toilets is to try improved on-site sanitation.”

Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) funds the operation and maintenance of these 11 toilets at the moment.

“In the toilets that TNUSSP has taken over, the usage of the toilets has increased three to six times. Most of our toilets are open 24 hours and are kept clean,” notes Donata.

The maintenance personnel also keep a record of the number of people using the toilets and the consumables being used every day.

At Kottivakkam beach (non-sewered toilet in Zone 14), TNUSSP has brought about multi-user reinvented technology {MURT), which is like a mini sewage treatment plant. “It can treat 5000 litres of sewage water every day. This water can be recycled to be used for flushing, cleaning toilets and gardening. The test run is going on in that toilet,” Donata describes. TNUSSP will try variations of MURT in two other toilets.

Behavioural change of users is important to sustain public toilets

Behavioural change cannot be achieved overnight, says Donata. “We are coming up with community engagement initiatives. In every toilet maintained by TNUSSP, we have put up a board about using the toilets regarding hygiene and toilet etiquette. Other activities and campaigns are also lined up. For instance, on World Toilet Day, we took a pledge with people. Also, there are ideas for community monitoring groups and RWAs and shopkeepers to help with toilet monitoring.”

Among the three models that TNUSSP is piloting, the toilets maintained by women SHGs fare better in community engagement. “We gave additional training to the private enterprise-run toilets on community engagement. Community engagement involves instructing the public about how to use the toilets [responsibly]; and organising meetings and rallies with the local communities to find their needs for toilets,” says Donata.

“A toilet will need one person 24/7 to monitor,” says Ganga. Users will not take the toilets for granted and this will also streamline responsible usage.

Recycle Bin has been renovating community toilets, apart from bringing about behavioural change campaigns in slums, including livelihood activities.

“We have made a toolkit for making toilets accessible from a physical access and gender point of view. Then, we constructed 50 toilets in the city to understand the physical infrastructure part of the toilet. We made a design toolkit for non-binary and trans people apart from disabled people,” explains Ganga

Recycle Bin is planning to implement the toolkit in 15 toilets in zones 5 and 9.

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) on the cards for public toilets in Chennai

A roadmap for public toilets in Chennai involves the civic body partnering with private entities.

“Private parties will construct or renovate the toilets apart from operating, monitoring and maintaining them, and it is going to be a nine-year contract. This project will be undertaken in phases,” says a GCC official.

“Although the maintenance of some of the public toilets is privatised currently, they have not been outsourced to private contractors fully. The PPP involves complete outsourcing,” says T. Saravanabavanantham, Superintendent Engineer (SE) of Buildings in GCC.

The civic body will contribute 40% of the amount for the construction or refurbishment of toilets, and the private player will contribute 60%. After the toilets are built or renovated, GCC will reimburse the amount spent by the private entity.

“Technical consultants have surveyed the existing conditions and there has been a proposal for the construction of new toilets based on demand and location,” says the official, answering on what basis will the toilets be built.

Phase 1 of the project includes the toilets in zones 5 and 6 and one portion of zone 9. In these zones, 372 locations with 3270 toilet seats have been identified for the PPP project. “We are yet to award the tenders to the private contractors who will take over the toilets,” says the official. “By next year, we hope the toilets from Phase 1 will open for the public.”

Then, Phase 2 will include 7, 8, rest of 9 and 10 zones. “The surveys are going on for the toilets in these zones,” says the official.

Phase 3 will involve the zones from 11 to 15 and Phase 4 will include zones 1 to 4. The last two phases are yet to be chalked out.

The private contractors can put up advertisements for revenue, and for the public, it will be still free to use. “The new toilets will have top-notch design and it will be made very user-friendly, like the ones you see in airports,” says Saravanabavanantham.

While the toilets are getting built or renovated, alternative toilets may be available at a distance of 200 to 500 metres for the public to use, says the SE.

While ambitious efforts are underway to remake the public toilet infrastructure, joint efforts of the public and the civic body are necessary for its continued maintenance and for Chennai to attain legitimate open defecation-free status.

Featured in THE TIMES OF INDIA

TRICHY: The importance of maintaining toilets and providing more urinals in public places to prevent pollution in the transit hubs were some of the points stressed by participants at an event held to commemorate World Toilet Day, here on Saturday.

While Trichy Corporation introduced QR code-based feedback system in public toilets, the City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS), an NGO conducted an interaction event to create a solution for improving urban sanitation.

At a programme organised by the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support (TNUSSP), Dr M A Aleem, a member of the Trichy district welfare fund committee said that lessons on sanitation must be introduced in all schools.

“Open urination is thriving. To create awareness and ownership attitude among students at a very young age, we must include sanitation and hygiene lessons in schools,” he said.

Discussions on pollution caused by the poor design of septic tanks to ground and water and the role of citizens in restoring safe sanitization were held. Although Trichy has more than 400 public toilets, one of the highest in the state, partcipants stressed for a similar focus on urinals.

Meanwhile, corporation installed QR-code enabled feedback system in the toilets.

Based on the feedback, the maintenance will be improved. Since Trichy lost significant marks in the national cleanliness survey Swachh Survekshan 2022 in the toilet maintenance category, the civic body is improving the public toilet infrastructure.

Featured in THE HINDU

Finding a usable public toilet in Chennai continues to be a challenge for many, especially women. The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), which currently maintains public toilets in 943 locations, is planning to complete the construction of 366 more toilets by early next year. But, without quality maintenance and upkeep, mere expansion of capacity will not yield desired results, indicate research, and user experience.

To address these shortcomings, the GCC rolled out a pilot programme in July. The operation and maintenance of nine freshly renovated public and community toilets in the city were outsourced to three types of contractors – women self-help groups, private companies, and community-based entrepreneurs. The public’s response to these toilets, located in Zones 13 and 14, has been overwhelming. The caretakers claim the number of users per day has risen significantly.

As part of the renovation, the GCC has fixed broken doors, taps, and pipes. The freshly painted toilets now have a digital feedback device for the public to leave feedback and CCTV surveillance. The women’s toilets are fitted with sanitary napkin vending machines. The toilets for persons with disabilities and senior citizens have standard assistance mechanisms.

For their part, the contractors are ensuring the toilets are open 16-24 hours a day, and that a cleaner and supervisor are present for most of the hours. GCC is studying the pros and cons of these three contractors and their business models.

“The idea is to rope in facility management providers to handle the maintenance of the toilets in order to provide world-class facilities — in that they are functional (at all times) and very clean,” says M.S. Prasanth, Deputy Commissioner (Works), GCC.

The numbers have been encouraging. Between July and October, the average number of daily users at the Guindy bus terminus facility increased by 200 persons; at Thiruvanmiyur bus depot, it increased by 300.

Santhosh Ragavan, team lead of Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) — the organisation that has been roped in by the GCC for the pilot programme, says that this exercise is a learning process.

“What we are trying to do is find what improvements are needed with the existing system. We are not only studying all of this, but we are also running this ourselves; so, we will have a better understanding of what is needed to ensure sustenance,” he says.

While progress has been good, the scalability and sustainability of such models of upkeep are yet to be witnessed. “The State has the good intentions of providing these services free of cost to the people. That is challenging but an important way of approaching this,” he says. “But, sustenance is an important aspect. We need to pay workers involved on a par with other sectors and services.”

Mr. Prasanth says GCC is exploring ways to generate revenue and optimise expenditure. “The model adopted for Zone 5 and 6 has been to promote ad space [on the walls and other parts of the premises]. We are looking at adding minor incentives to make the bids more competitive. That said, even in the pilot programme, the Corporation has to account for management expenses. With the management currently desegregated (with the involvement of many different departments), it is difficult to assess how much is being spent. Outsourcing maintenance will mean less expenditure. There the payment will be linked to service delivery, and it can be graded through independent assessment. At the end of the day, it’s not a self-sustaining enterprise, the government will have to spend some money,” he reasons.

The project has allowed them to pick up and address several challenges such as the need for a better roof at one place to septic tank management in another. With such learning in hand, GCC plans to roll out the programme citywide. All in good time.