Ahead of the Central Government assessing the city for cleanliness, the Coimbatore Corporation is working overtime to make the city open defecation-free.
The civic body wants the city to be so completely free that it does not want even the railway track to be used for open defecation, say officials. To ensure that the track is clean, the Corporation held a meeting recently with the railway officials to ask them to ensure that track is not used for defecation. Railway officials did not comment on the issue, though.
The Corporation on its part has identified 75 open defecation (ODF) spots across the five zones in the city. It has also studied the problems there and the result of the study is that the Corporation is in the process of repairing public and community toilets, says officials.
In the toilets, the doors or floors or pipes were damaged. There was no water or the tank leaked. Or the flooring was so bad that it was inaccessible to the public. So to set right the problems, the Corporation has embarked on a drive to repair the toilets, the officials say and add that the Corporation is repairing 80 toilets at Rs. 6.53 crore.
It is also in the process of building new ones – 16 toilets at nearly Rs. 2 crore.
The officials say that the Corporation is not just concentrating on the infrastructure part alone. It has posted its conservancy workers at the ODF spots to prevent people from dirtying the place and directing them to the nearest toilet. And, it is also engaged in educating them to use toilets.
Simultaneously, the Corporation officials are also visiting houses near ODF spots to check if all houses have toilets and if new ones can be built under the Swachh Bharat programme.
