VIJAYAWADA: Vijayawada, part of the State capital Amaravati, may be developing on all fronts but there is one aspect that the city badly needs to focus on-the availability of toilets for women. Railway station, bus station, public parks, tourist spots or markets, accessing a toilet particularly in public spaces has been a perennial problem for the fairer sex.
Be it Mahatma Gandhi Road, Eluru Road or Besant Road, where hundreds of women work, there is no facility for a public toilet. Norms recommend that one public toilet must be provided for 60 persons in a city. This means that city has a dearth of toilets. The public health department of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) has failed to take stock of the issue.
‘’Due to non- availability of public toilets, we are forced to use the toilets in nearby shopping mall,” said Ch Ramalakshmi who works for a cosmetics shop near Besant Road. The locality has been devoid of a public toilet for women since many years. There have been talks of construction of a toilet on Besant Road for past few months but nothing has come up so far, she alleged.
“Many of the public toilets in the city have water stagnated in front of them, do not have proper ventilation, lights or even water. The smell emanating from them is unbearable, forcing people to avoid the toilets. While men urinate anywhere, we suffer,’’ said B Karuna, a helper working in a shop at Besant Road. Negligence on one hand and misuse on the other comes in handy for anti socials who use these toilets for illegal activities. Though pay-and-use toilets are available at some locations, they betray signs of neglect and poor maintenance, she said.
On the western side of the city which houses several colleges, girl students are facing inconvenience due to lack of adequate public toilets. Incidentally, there are no public toilets around the three-km radius of old city. For any women who needs to visit a toilet at One Town, she has to travel at least 500 metres to avail the facility near Kaleswara Rao Market, run by Sulabh International. Women are charged `5 for a single visit to the not-so-clean washroom.
When contacted, VMC Health Officer Babu Srinivasan informed that the corporation has already designed proposals to install mobile toilet facility for women in market places of the city. The works will commence shortly after a ground level survey conducted by public health officials. Steps will be evolved to maintain clean and hygienic atmosphere near the toilets by deploying adequate sanitation staff for the convenience of women, he said.
