BENGALURU:Radha gets up as early as 4 am in order to stand in a queue before the community toilet in Ambedkar Nagar slum in Okalipuram.As most of the residents in the slum with 250 houses are daily wage labourers, the day begins much earlier than 4 am. Radha says the toilet built by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) does not have power and no proper water connection.
Even after paying `5, the water they receive is contaminated with worms and smells like drain water. Radha informs that adolescent girls dump sanitary napkins or used clothes in the open due to absence of dustbins.“As the toilet is not child-friendly, we are forced to accompany children, differently-abled people and pregnant women to the toilets. To avoid paying and using the unhygienic toilet many residents defecate in the open,’’ says Radha.
Thus diseases like Chikungunya, dengue, Malaria are rampant in the slum. Radha is forced to spend her meagre earnings on treatment for urinary tract infection and diseases like Tuberculosis that her family contacts at regular intervals due to unhygienic conditions.Alvelamma of Baiyappanahalli slum (Ward Number 59) says their forefathers had resided in the same slum which still does not have a community toilet.
“Sometimes we use drain water to clean,’’ she says matter-of-factly. Despite their appeals to elected representatives, no one had helped them build a toilet so far, she rues.Lakshmamma has been residing in Chamundinagar slum for the past 25 years. The slum has no proper toilet facility. The toilet they built gets blocked frequently. Dr Sarala, a gynaecologist, who has visited slums in Mattikere and Mayabazaar, said women residing in slums suffer not just from health problems but also physically and mentally due to unclean toilets.
The Swachh Bharat campaign was launched on October 2, 2014. Yet till now nearly a majority of 597 slums (only 388 among them are notified by the Karnataka Slum Development Board) do not have toilets.
With census data revealing that Bengaluru city’s access to toilets had improved from 90.78 per cent in 2001 to 96.76 per cent in 2011, a survey of community toilets in slums was undertaken by Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), Hasiru Dala and Radio Active.BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath asserts that community toilets in slums should be maintained by the community themselves.
