As wait for community toilet prolongs, Colaba slum residents resort to open defecation

Work on a community toilet in Colaba’s Darya Nagar is stuck in a bureaucratic tangle even more than seven months after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) earmarked ₹42 lakh for its construction

Work on a community toilet in Colaba’s Darya Nagar is stuck in a bureaucratic tangle even more than seven months after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) earmarked ₹42 lakh for its construction. As a result, people living in an unregistered slum settlement are forced to defecate in the open near the sea.

Mumbai, India - February 23, 2023: An aerial view of Darya Nagar, Jamshedji Bunder, Colaba, in Mumbai, India, on Thursday, February 23, 2023. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande/HT Photo) (HT PHOTO)

There are both registered and non-registered slums at Darya Nagar, and the population keeps increasing. Ironically, the nearest toilet is in Azad Nagar which takes around eight minutes on foot.

In May 2021, Amar Swastik Mitra Mandal, a registered group, wrote to BMC, requesting it to build a community toilet in the area. However, after several follow-ups, which entailed 40 emails, there was no clear answer from civic officials if they were considering the proposal.

Finally, Yogesh Mandre, member of Mandal, filed an RTI application and found out that BMC had in July 2022 approved a proposal and set aside a tentative cost of ₹42 lakh for the toilet.

Last month, Mandre approached the office of A ward under whose jurisdiction the area falls. “Ward officials said that the file was with the chief accountant, finance department. So, I went there but was told that there were some accounting errors in the proposal sent by the ward. When I contacted the ward again, they said it was stuck with the accounts and when I reached out to the accounts, they claimed the file had been sent back to the ward.”

“The file is stuck in the bureaucratic process,” he summed it up.

When HT visited the area, some people were seen defecating near the sea.

An officer from the maintenance department of A ward said, “There was some issue with the scrutiny of the accounts and the tender rework. The process to appoint a contractor is on.”

After several attempts, Shivdas Gurav, assistant commissioner (in-charge) of A ward, responded to a WhatsApp message: “Contractor has been appointed and the work will be started from 1st of March.”

The assistant commissioner had made him a similar promise last time that BMC would begin the work in October 2022, but nothing happened after that, Mandre claimed.

“In a few months, it will be two years since we first wrote to them asking for a community toilet. How can a cash-rich civic body like BMC take such a long time to build one toilet? I really hope this happens soon,” he added.