HYDERABAD: Attending nature’s call is going to be costly affair in the city soon. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is planning to revamp 30 of the obsolete 100 odd prefabricated toilets and handover them to private agencies on Public Private Partnership mode for operation and maintenance.
The private firms, to whom the maintenance of these 30 proposed toilets are allotted, would be allowed to levy user charges which include Rs 5 for urination and Rs 10 for toilet usage. Presently, no charges are levied for urination, whereas Rs 2 is to be paid for toilet.
Last year, the corporation had spent nearly Rs 6 crore for installing as many as 109 prefabricated toilets, each costing about Rs 6 lakh. Majority of them have become nonfunctional due to poor operation and maintenance and for other reasons like lack of water, sewer system and power supply.
Because of this, a whopping Rs 6 crore have gone down the drain as the so called 100 odd modern prefabricated toilets installed just last year in various parts became defunct.
GHMC officials told Express that in the past one year they have installed about 100 prefabricated toilets which due to various reasons became defunct. Hence, of these 100, about 30 toilets will be handed over on PPP mode for O&M.
Because of lack of public toilets in the twin cities, people are forced to relieve themselves in open places.
The GHMC would provide power supply, connection to sewer system, water supply and waste collection from the toilets where as the private operator would maintain the toilets. The operational hours would be from 5 am to 11 pm every day.