THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : VK Prasanth, MLA, on Monday geotagged a public toilet facility at the women-friendly bus waiting shed at Kazhakoottam junction, thereby kickstarting the mammoth exercise of mapping all public toilets in the country. The public toilet was analysed based on the parameters of accessibility, visibility, hygiene and security. While the MLA rated five out of five for visibility and accessibility, hygiene and security scored four points each.
The initiative by firm Recycle Bin attempts to geotag and map all public toilets through their app Kakkoos and thereby initiate discussions on public toilets, bring in behavioral change and facilitate policy-level interventions to ensure accessibility to hygienic toilets.
The country-wide mapping is in continuation with what the organisation initiated in the capital two years ago where they mapped over 120 public toilets in the city. A re-mapping of the toilets in the city is being a carried out. The organisation has created its campaign for facilitating the mapping process which is crowd dependent.
Through the ‘iamhere’ campaign, the firm reaches out to people to take part in mapping the toilets via the Kakkooos app which can be downloaded from PlayStore. “When we mapped the toilets last time, we were under the impression that there were just 25 toilets, following the figures we obtained,” says Kaveri Girish, architect, Recycle Bin. “But with public participation, we could map over 150 toilets,” she adds.