Lack of toilets risks ODF tag

City has only 1 toilet every 10 km against the norm of 1 toilet every 1 km After city was given the tag, netizens put up images of people relieving themselves in open

For its 9,000-km road, the state capital has a total of 303 toilets and about 800 newly built. That makes it about one toilet every 10 km, against the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation norm of a toilet for every kilometre.

That illustrates the difficulty of taking the open defecation-free tag at face value.

A week ago, after the GHMC announced Hyderabad was free from open defecation, many social media users put up images of people relieving themselves on the roadsides.

To be sure, apart from the large resident population in the city spread over 625 square kilometres, about 2.5 lakh people enter the city daily for work, business or simply to visit.

A large section of visitors is entirely dependent on public facilities.

The number of available toilets is not adequate to serve them.

The city’s population stands at 1.3 crore including on the outskirts according to the Economic Survey, 2016-17. The total number of households is approximately 21 lakh.

In a recent complaint after the city was declared open defecationfree, Ms Sarala Kumari from KPHB complained to the GHMC that the vast stretch of government land behind Shyama Prasad Mookherjee municipal Park on Kukatpally, Road 3, was a common site for open defecation.

Of people peeing in public, there is no end to the complaints.

Women face a lot of problems because as there are not many toilets for them.

“Most public toilets lack sections for women. Attendants are mostly men and many many women feel shy to utilise public toilets,” said Ms Sindhu Priya, a working woman.