The sight of five janitors living in a dingy room next to the toilets in the Panaji market tells us an inhumane story on World Toilet Day, a day when Goa looks to reaffirm its Open Defecation-Free (ODF) vow which it resolutely takes every year. Similar is the story at the Panaji KTC bus-stand and several other public toilets. Caretakers are virtually housed in the toilet blocks where they do all their household chores including cooking, eating and even sleeping.
World Toilet Day is a very significant day to remember for Goa. It’s that day of the year which gives the government a stark reminder of its countless promises of making the state Open Defecation-Free. And Goa continues to have the dubious distinction of being bracketed with Tripura and two union territories for failure on this count. The ODF issue, just like the plastic-free one, has seen successive chief ministers “ Laxmikant Parsekar and Manohar Parrikar “ failing big time.
If the government has not made any headway on ODF during Parsekar’s regime, there is hardly any hope in sight now with governance gasping for breath. The last we heard was that Goa Waste Management Corporation was to supply around 60,000 bio-toilets for which tenders were floated. With the Parrikar government in a state of flux, there is literally no movement since then.
It would be intriguing to understand why there is no seriousness on public utility services. Are the 60,000 bio-toilets all that the government is going to focus on to solve the State’s open defecation problem? If we are serious about this issue, government must take hygiene seriously first. To be greeted with a stink in government offices, police stations and municipalities is nothing new. A complete upgrade with round-the-clock maintenance and constant inspections are needed on this. The checklist issued by the health services look spick and span on paper. Provision of round-the-clock water, supply of toilet paper rolls and sanitizers, cleaning of floors every three hours and services of an attendant are however a rarity. Our public toilets cut a sorry figure.
Moreover, awareness is paramount and this has to spread out across the breadth and width of Goa. Wall paintings in the capital city with colourful messages on open defecation is not going to help, it will go down only as government’s own publicity stunt. Paintings can’t convince people against open defecation. The sorry state of facilities is frustrating and it is here that people are driven beyond a point of embarrassment. Let us not forget the lady who urinated on the Margao Municipal Council inspector’s chair to protest the dirty and unhygienic condition of the toilets and preferred to spend a day in jail instead of paying a fine of Rs 500.
The government needs to change the way it looks at hygiene. By providing bio-toilets, it is only doing patchwork.
