The city has around 700 public toilets and less than 400 of them are in useable condition. Newly added wards, consisting 110 villages around the city, do not have a single public toilet. This was revealed during the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) council meeting here on Tuesday.
Some of the existing public toilets were constructed by Infosys Foundation, while some were constructed under MLAs and MPs funds. A few were constructed by BBMP, but it was not able to maintain them.
Commissioner Lakshminarayana told Express, there are around 700 public toilets, of which 300 were constructed by Infosys Foundation. But they were not maintained. “Now, we are considering to call for tender and the builder has to construct toilets and maintain them.”
BBMP is now planning to construct more public toilets. “Funds will be allotted from the Mayor’s grants for constructing one public toilet per ward,” Mayor B S Sathyanarayana told the Council meeting. The toilets, he said, will be constructed in the BBMP land and the councillors can decide the place where the public toilet can be constructed in their wards.
BBMP is also considering to construct the toilets under Public-Private partnership (PPP) model. “The BBMP is into constructing toilets, but not maintaining them,” said Commissioner M Lakshminarayana. “Let us call for tenders and let the bidder put up advertisement hoardings, collect fee from public for usage of toilets and maintain them. Also, they can adopt the existing toilets,” he said.
Earlier, initiating the debate on the subject during the the meeting, Jayamahal ward Councillor M K Gunashekar said there are very few public toilets in the city and majority of them do not have water supply. “BWSSB has disconnected water supply as BBMP has not paid water bills,” he said. He also urged the Mayor and Commissioner to inspect public toilets. “According to section 58(4) of Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act, it is an obligatory duty of BBMP to provide public toilets. But we are failing in this regard,” he said
According to Gunashekar, a survey conducted by a Bangalore-based agency stressed that the city needs 15,000 public toilets. He also said in this year’s budget, BBMP has not allotted funds for public toilets.