App to locate 1,800 civic agency toilets, report unclean ones soon
Are you upset with unclean public toilets in Delhi? Do you want to complain but are clueless whom to approach?
Within two months, Delhi’s three civic agencies will launch a mobile app, which will help people give a feedback about the condition of toilets they visit. Municipal corporation officials said once they receive a complaint, teams will be sent to check the public utilities. The teams would then inform private concessionaires managing the toilet.
The app will also help find locations of 1,800 municipal toilets across the city. Users will be able to complain if the toilets are not clean or lack basic amenities such as water taps. The South Delhi Municipal Corporation provided location of 900 public utilities; North Delhi Municipal Corporation 350 and East Delhi Municipal Corporation 550.
According to the results of the Swachh Survekshan Survey 2017, North MCD, SDMC and EDMC ranked 279, 202 and 196 respectively in the review held across 434 Indian cities on waste management, sanitation conditions and overall cleanliness. According to MCD officials, effective use of the app will help in improving their rankings in Swachh Survekshan 2018.
“Our three agencies are currently busy with the geo-tagging of all public toilets under their jurisdiction. The process included identifying the latitude and longitude location of each toilet and marking them on Google Map so that the people can easily locate them. We are expecting the work to be completed in a couple of days,” said an official from IT department of South Delhi Municipal Corporation.
An official said the app will have a rating scale of Happy, Not Happy and Average.
“The app users can also identify missing amenities such as water supply, poor maintenance or lack of repair,” an official said.
Devender Kumar, director, department of environment management services said, “If it is dirty, we will arrange for its cleaning within hours. But if it needs repair work it will be done in a week’s time,” he said.
A study by Action Aid, an NGO, in December 2016 found that out of 229 toilets, only 149 had facilities for women. As per the report, 70% of out of the 229 toilets were not clean, 65% had no flush, 50% had no water, 70% had no signage and almost 70% weren’t disabled friendly. In March 2016, New Delhi Municipal Corporation launched NDMC 311. The app has been downloaded by 25,000 people and 20,000 complaints (of various categories) have been sorted by the officials. The app helps to locate public toilets and file complaints if their condition is not found satisfactory. To ensure cleaner toilets in municipal corporation schools, Sampurna an NGO, launched an app in May 2016. It provides detail of toilets at the 1,760 municipal schools. Though the service was operational for six months only three complaints were received. In 2016, the Centre in collaboration with Google started geo-mapping toilets on Google Map. 5,500 toilets located in Delhi-NCR were added. The locator has been used by 9,500 people since Dec 2016 but no feedback was received. The ministry intensified the campaign on Wednesday.
The process included identifying the latitude and longitude location of each toilet and marking them on Google Map... We are assuming the work to be completed in a couple of days