Toilets at Chennai airport are in line for a revamp.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has taken note of the repeated complaints by passengers on the poor state of toilets at the airport.
A study will be commissioned this month on ways to improve the toilets.
Airport director Deepak Shastri said, “Some of the toilets at the airport have construction-related problems. At first, we plan to revamp two toilets that most passengers use. After that, we will conduct a customer feedback survey. If we receive a positive response, then the project will be taken up for other toilets too.”
Chennai airport, with about 330 flight movements, handles at least 30,000 passengers on a daily basis, said officials.
After the airport’s new terminals were inaugurated in 2012, passengers expressed displeasure at the unhygienic state of the toilets there.
But AAI took cognisance only six months after the issue was raised in the Parliament and civil aviation minister, P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, issued a direction to address it.
The airport has 22 toilets in the domestic terminal and 18 toilets in the international terminal. As part of the pilot project, one toilet in the arrival hall of the domestic terminal and another in the departure hall of the international terminal will be taken up for a study.
Work to revamp the toilets will not be outsourced. AAI staff will carry out the study and carry out the project, said Mr. Shastri.
“Each toilet here has a different problem. So, every single toilet will be taken up for a study and appropriate measures for fixing it will be carried out if the project proves to be effective,” he said.
Mithilesh Kumar Jha of Sulabh International (Tamil Nadu), an organisation that works in the field of sanitation, said the toilets at the airport can improve if there is better supervision and cleaning is carried out round-the-clock.
“The problem here is lack of monitoring of toilets by staff. In addition, they have to constantly check if there are blocks in the sewage networks,” he said.
