Ahmedabad councillors want 54 public toilets removed

AHMEDABAD: Gone are the days when the 'Swachch Bharat' fervour spurred the construction of public toilets in the city, and paeans were sung to public health and hygiene. Today, municipal councillors, who had then posed as flag-bearers of the public toilet movement, are now requesting their zonal heads to remove the public convenience, claiming they are a "public nuisance".
Between June 2021 and April 17, 2023, 64 councillors across 16 wards requested the removal of 54 public toilets in the city. Sources said 50 percent of these toilets have been pulled down.
As many as 300 public pay-and-use toilets were constructed across the city as part of the Open Defecation Free (ODF) city campaign, said a senior health official from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). These were in addition to roughly 80 existing public toilets.
"This ensured one toilet for 21,428 Amdavadis or one toilet for every 7.7km stretch in the city. This is dismally low for a city with a 75 lakh population," added the official, refusing to be named. Most of the 300-odd toilets were constructed before 2020; not many were built post-Covid.
All four councillors of a ward have to place a request to remove a public toilet from an area. The application is sent to the solid waste management department for approval.
A cursory glance at the requests made so far shows the highest number of the requests, 13, came from the Gomtipur ward. While councillors placed requests to remove seven toilets from Asarwa and five from Saraspur, they wanted one each removed from Navrangpura, Shahibaug, Stadium, Nava Vadaj, and Bapunagar wards. The department received requests to remove three toilets from the Vasna ward.
Each of AMC's seven zones spends roughly Rs 30 lakh to Rs 40 lakh per annum on the maintenance of public toilets.
'Between 2016 and 2020, AMC built more than 15,000 personal toilets'
Bharat Patel, chairman of AMC health and solid waste management committee, said, "The councillors usually seek demolition of toilets that are dilapidated, or if the space can be utilized for other public purposes like building an anganwadi or community area."
Officials added they also got requests from societies as the public toilets "downgraded their localities.
Gomtipur councillor Iqbal Sheikh said, "Most toilets on the main roads are left untouched, and however, those built within chawls are the ones that are pulled down. After the government constructed toilets inside homes under the Swachch Bharat campaign, many community toilets in chawls became dilapidated and had to be demolished."
Between 2016 and 2020, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation constructed more than 15,000 personal toilets. Sabarmati councillor Chetan Patel added, "Recently, we had to demolish a public toilet in our area to construct new municipal staff quarters. We would not have got BU permission otherwise.