Loo & behold! Brands on toilet walls

AHMEDABAD: The usual sight of a public toilet in Ahmedabad overwhelms one’s senses — urine stains, overflowing gutters and horrible stink. Ahmedabad’s civic body now proposes a new “marketing’ makeover for these defiled walls.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been desperately trying to increase its revenue and in one such effort the AMC has decided to give advertisement rights on walls of public toilets. The AMC has in a policy decision decided that the advertisement rights will be given not only to the terraces of public toilets but even wall-wrap advertisement rights will also be given.

Municipal commissioner Vijay Nehra said that some 33 such toilets in the northwest zone and 18 pay-and-use toilets in the southwest zone will be the first public toilets to be offered for the advertisements.

AMC officials said the advertisement rights on these 51 toilets will bring in Rs 97.7 lakh revenue and the entire rights will be given through e-auction. Further, AMC officials said that another 61 pay-and-use toilets in the western part of the city would also fetch an income of Rs 30.50 lakh. In all, the AMC expects to earn Rs 1.28 crore from advertisement rights given on these toilets.

According to senior officials, the AMC, in order to give out more facilities is planning to have more such toilets constructed in the city. An officer said that usually the walls of these public toilets are full of illegal advertisements, and the AMC was not getting any revenue. Now both maintenance expenses and unwanted advertisements will be taken care of.

A senior officer said that so far no official was willing to use his power and give such rights, and this is the first time that such a proposal had been made and forwarded to the standing committee for clearance.

An officer said that based on the experience of these 84 toilets, the AMC may even go in for giving advertisement rights in other parts of the city. Moreover, the AMC will also permit people to come forward and construct pay-and-use toilets and use the same for their advertisements. A official said that there is also a possibility that the AMC may give the advertisement rights against maintenance of hygienic toilets.