New public toilets to come up at prominent locations in Chennai

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation on Friday tabled a resolution under which the civic body has decided to select a concessionaire through an open bidding system who will design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) a selected set of existing toilets in city. The nine year project will be implemented at an overall cost of Rs 429 crore and for the first phase the corporation council resolved sanctioning Rs 7.85 crore covering the toilets in zone 5,6, and 9. The new facilities or restructring will come up at prominent locations covering Central Railway station, Egmore railway station, Government General hospital, Nehru stadium, secretariat, Marina Beach, Beach station, Broadway and Parry's corner.

At present, the toilets are being maintained by the conservancy workers of the respective zones, which is not providing satisfactory results. Many toilets in the city require major and minor reconstructing, new construction and maintenance especially in zone 5, 6 and 9 (Marina) have been clubbed together as a single package and proposed to be taken as a pilot project, ” noted the resolution by GCC.

The proposal was presented before the project sanctioning committee of SBM 2.0 on February 26, 2022 and an initial estimate of Rs 7.85 crore was sanctioned. The Detailed Feasibility Report (DFR) was submitted to Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Development Board (TNIDB) for their review and approval. Based on the DFR comments from TNIDB, an inventory assessment, as-is study was taken up and the project structure was revised to a Hybrid-Annuity Model, the resolution read.

To cater the needs of the public and provide better services, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) stated that the proposal for toilets in three Zones in the city has been forwarded to the government approval. In addition, the Chennai Corporation Commissioner announced that free sanitary napkins will be provided at all city corporation schools soon.

Currently, there are over 800 toilets and more than 8,000 seats within the Chennai city limits under the maintenance of GCC. As per the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) 2.0 operational guidelines in October 2021, there should be at least one accessible toilet within a radius of 500 meters.

Addressing the council meeting the commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi also said that corporation was taking steps to improve the sanitation and hygiene in city. The Chennai mayor R Priya will soon inaugurate free sanitary napkins at city corporation schools especially at girls’ as part of the sanitation improvement works.