SANITATION – IN DEPTH RESEARCH: PUBLIC TOILETS

After a public consultation of informal sector workers highlighted that public toilets were an essential and missing piece of urban infrastructure, Transparent Chennai decided to undertake a detailed study of these toilets in the city.

We first gathered basic data about toilets. According to the city’s responses to our RtI, Chennai only has a total of 715 public toilets, indicating an acute shortage of public toilets relative to need. Moreover, Chennai Corporation does not maintain a central repository of the number and locations of public toilets within the city at all; only the Zonal offices have this information. Our team also found discrepancies in information acquired directly from the zonal offices and when the same data was requested through RtI. Zonal data listed a total of 572 public toilets while that from RtI showed 715. Such discrepancies in raw data indicate a weak foundation on the basis of which plans and policies are formulated.

Our team’s mapping and survey of all toilets in Zone 4, which had a total of 49 toilets to serve a population of 4 lakhs, revealed unexpected ground realities. While one would expect women to be thronging these toilets, the contrary was true during our field visits and interviews with caretakers. Not many women and negligible numbers of children were seen to be using these toilets. What could be the reasons for this surprising finding?

Firstly, a number of the toilets were not well maintained. Problems like blocked sewers, insufficient or no lighting, stench, and structural damages like cracked ceilings, seepage, and absence of doors in individual latrines were common. Secondly, users were being charged for the services they availed despite a reported ban against pay-and-use toilets, and the user fees varied from one toilet facility to another. Thirdly, it was clear even from our observations that these toilets were not in areas where they would most be needed. Often, the toilets were in areas with sparse populations or limited foot traffic, away from informal settlements, marketplaces and bus-stops, and were often hidden by walls or trees.

The map above, which we created by juxtaposing data of undeclared slums taken from the TNSCB with our map of toilets in Zone 4, confirmed our suspicions from the field. Undeclared slums are likely to be areas of highest need for sanitation, because they are slums in which no state money has been put towards environmental improvements. Yet, there are multiple toilets in locations where there are no undeclared slums recorded at all (red arrows), suggesting that toilets are not being built strategically to address the greatest needs.

Our interviews with government officials from Metrowater, the Slum Clearance Board, and the Corporation of Chennai’s zonal offices highlighted the absence of accountability for public toilets, as well as for sanitation for the poor as a whole. At the zonal level, sanitary inspectors report to the Zonal Heath Officer and are responsible for public health in designated wards, including monitoring toilets. Unfortunately, these inspectors, who make daily rounds of their wards and are most aware of the local sanitation needs and problems, have no authority over the zonal engineers who actually maintain, construct, and demolish toilets. At the city level, there is no department, agency, or individual exclusively responsible for increasing access to sanitation for the poor, and residents in undeclared slums are largely overlooked.