Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

Concern over ‘fake community groups’ handling sanitary complexes

TIRUCHI: The federation of AWASH – Association for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene from 186 slums of the Tiruchi City Corporation – at its recent meeting urged the civic body authorities to appoint community-based organisations (CBO) with good track record for maintaining community toilets in the slums.

The meeting expressed concern over the handing over of some of the community managed toilets and integrated sanitary complexes to “fake community groups”, who pocket the revenue generated from the pay and use toilets without caring for maintenance, rather than utilising the revenue for upkeep of the toilets.

Facilitating the meeting, J. Geetha, Executive Director, Gramalaya, charged some individuals and councillors of conniving with subordinate officers to convert the community managed toilets into individual-managed toilets. Such attempts were aimed at only getting money out of the toilet maintenance. Gramalaya, which was working towards declaring all the 186 slums as open defecation free zones, would withdraw from urban intervention if such trend continues, she said.

Gramalaya was in the process of assisting communities to form AWASH in each and every target slums to increase the participation of men, women and youths in promoting water and sanitation activities in a sustainable manner, she said.

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