Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal together inaugurated close to 1,000 new community toilets here on Tuesday. The move, the Chief Minister said, was in line with his government's commitment towards making the Capital open defecation free.
The toilet complex with 945 lavatories has been opened at the JJ Basti Bhoomiheen Camp in south Delhi's Kalkaji as part of a programme to add new toilets in JJ clusters across the Capital. The Chief Minister also promised the residents their own local mohalla clinic at a location adjacent to the newly inaugurated complex.
Mr. Kejriwal took the opportunity to renew the AAP’s pre-Assembly poll promise of in-situ rehabilitation of slum residents and declared that the Delhi government intends to allot houses to the residents of the cluster near their current makeshift housing “in the coming two to three years”.
Lack of toilets
“In 2005-06, I was a part of an NGO called Parivartan and stayed for three to four months in JJ colonies to see what hardships the residents were facing. Lack of toilets was their biggest problem, especially for the women,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“Women in such colonies either had to wake up very early or wait for night to use toilets. That was when I decided that if there was one initiative that had to be taken up on a war footing it was to make toilets accessible to the residents of slum clusters,” the Chief Minister added.
More than 7,000 new community toilets have been built since the AAP government assumed office on 14 February, 2015, Mr. Kejriwal said.
Home for slum residents
He said his biggest dream now was to ensure that residents of slum clusters were given a permanent home each by the end of his term. “My colleague Satyendra Jain is working on a pan-Delhi plan to make this (in-situ rehabilitation) a reality. It won't happen as early as tomorrow, but residents of JJ colonies and slum clusters will be rehabilitated within three to five kilometres of where they now stay in the coming two to three years in a phased manner,” he said..
