NEW DELHI, India – While
the residents of city in other part of the world like Malaysia have to pay
for using toilets, city council in
western India is planning to pay residents to use public toilets in a desperate
attempt to stop legions of people urinating and defecating in public.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has decided to give
residents one rupee a visit in a bid to draw them into its 300 public toilets
and away from open areas and public walls, which often reek of urine.
AMC health officer Bhavikk Joshi said the offer would be
trialed at 67 public facilities across Ahmedabad, the main city in 
western
Gujarat state, where officers will give a coin to each user.
western
Gujarat state, where officers will give a coin to each user.
“Once successful the project will be implemented in all the
300 public toilets in Ahmedabad,” Joshi told AFP on Monday.
The move is the latest effort to motivate people to use
toilets after India’s government announced a cleanliness drive 
last year
championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
last year
championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Many people in India consider toilets unhygienic and prefer
to squat in the open, believing it more sanitary to defecate far from home.
India’s government last year announced a scheme to check
whether people who were given toilets as part of its 
cleanliness drive were
actually using them, by getting sanitary inspectors to go door-to-door.
cleanliness drive were
actually using them, by getting sanitary inspectors to go door-to-door.
UNICEF estimates that almost 594 million people — or nearly
half of India’s population — defecate in the open, with the situation worst in
dirt-poor rural areas.
Lack of toilets and other sanitation problems cause huge
health problems in India by causing illnesses such as diarrhoea.
Source: AFP
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