Soon, pay to use a public toilet in south Delhi

Unable to keep its loos from stinking, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation has proposed to charge money from users for the day-to-day maintenance of public toilets, Hamari Jamatia reports.

Want clean public toilets? Then pay for it.

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Unable to keep its loos from stinking, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation has proposed to charge money from users for the day-to-day maintenance of public toilets.

It is handing over the maintenance to the market associations and resident welfare associations who will meet the expenses by imposing user charges of Rs. 2 and Rs. 5. At present, public conveniences in south Delhi are free.

The proposal will be passed by the standing committee of the corporation on Tuesday.

In the next couple of weeks, the north civic corporation will also follow suit with a similar proposal aimed at keeping toilets cleaner.

The south body has about 500 toilets under its jurisdiction, mostly at commercial areas such as city community centres and markets.

Since these places see a lot of people using public toilets, the loos remain dirty. To overcome the problem, the corporation decided to hand over the maintenance to the traders' association.

Subhash Arya, leader of the House in south corporation, said, "We will renovate the toilets and hand them over to the associations who will collect charges from the users in order to keep them clean and to maintain a register."

The toilets built on busy roads will continue to be free of cost and the municipal corporation will take care of their cleanliness.

The civic body will review maintenance of toilets by the associations after six months of the agreement.

The proposal also includes provision of recycling the water used in the toilets. Ownership and advertising rights will remain with the civic body.

"The corporation workers do not clean urinals regularly. There is also a scarcity of labour which is forcing us to experiment with privatising them and see if it brings about a qualitative change in maintenance," said Mahender Nagpal, leader of the House, North Corporation.