CHENNAI: Less than a year ago, 45-year-old Arumugam of Chitra Nagar drowned in the Adyar river in the wee hours. He had slipped on a raised bund and fell into the river when he went there to relieve himself. Six months later, another resident of the same settlement, this time an old woman with waning eyesight slipped near the spot and breathed her last in the river.
With still no toilet in their settlement, 300 families in Chitra Nagar in Kotturpuram have to daily make a beeline for riverbanks before dawn to attend to nature’s call. This scene within the heart of the city confutes the Open Defecation Free status, the Swachh Bharat Mission granted TN two years ago.
The public toilet in the settlement had been washed away during the 2015 floods. Five years, two deaths and several incidents of injury apparently prove no match for the authorities’ apathy. “Our children have to go there. Our elderly parents have to go there in the dark. We accompany them whenever we can but it is impossible to be there all the time,” says a resident.
A resident told Express about his 13-year-old daughter who recently realised the shame associated with women defecating in the open. “When you are small, it does not strike you as odd. With time my daughter began to understand the humiliation associated with having to relieve herself in the open and she began to hold in urine for hours. The situation got so bad that she developed burning in the area and we had to rush to a hospital,” he adds.
Actually, there was one more toilet here, says Parameswari, another resident. “In 2016, however, a section of the settlement was evicted and that lone toilet too was razed.” According to Vanessa Peter from the Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC), basic amenities like toilet and drinking water should be provided irrespective of the legal tenure of settlements.
“In an earlier study we undertook, women in Chitra Nagar told us that they would keep vessels for urinating in the night and clean them in the morning. There should be coordination among departments to assess their needs and fulfil it,” she said. Official sources say that the families have been enumerated for relocation due to their proximity to the Adyar river. “Tenements for about 5,000 units were supposed to be ready by the end of this year. However, things has not been going according to plan due to Covid,” said a PWD official.