Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Hardeep Singh Puri launched Toilets 2.0 campaign at a national event organised at Bengaluru, Karnataka on the occasion of World Toilet Day 2022 on Saturday.
The campaign aims to change the face of public and community toilets in urban India through collective action involving citizens and Urban Local Bodies.
“India is set to go beyond the Open Defecation Free (ODF) narrative. Clean and safe public restrooms and public spaces will improve the experience and quality of public life and that is why I am delighted to launch Toilets 2.0 campaign,” he said.
Roopa Mishra, Joint Secretary, MoHUA, said that the campaign will energise and bring States, cities and citizens together to take forward a rich sanitation legacy under the Swachh Bharat Mission that will script the Toilets 2.0 journey of India.
The campaign has five thematic areas — ‘People for Toilets’ that will focus on cleaning and maintaining community and public toilets, ‘Partners for Toilets’ aimed at the adoption of public toilets, a design challenge under the ‘Design Toilets’ theme, ‘Rate your Toilet’ for the promotion of user feedback to improve public toilets and ‘My thoughts - Our Toilets’ that will seek to gather public opinion for toilets.
The People for Toilets program is an inter-city competition envisaged for cleaning and maintaining community and public toilets in which top-performing cities will be recognised.
The objective of the Partners for Toilets theme is to forge partnerships with potential organisations for the adoption of community and public toilets for interim cleaning, annual operations and maintenance, one-time financial aid, beautification activities, innovation and feedback among others.
The Design Challenge is being organised in collaboration with the Council of Architecture through which entries will be invited from students of architecture and practising architects on designs for aspirational toilets in the two categories of Public toilets and Community toilets. The top designs will be turned into a compendium for cities’ consideration to adopt for their facilities.
Rate your Toilet is for promoting user feedback to improve public and community toilets, while My thoughts - Our Toilets is a general public survey among citizens on public toilets across the country.
A questionnaire on citizen aspiration for toilets will be available on MyGov platform for the public to answer. The results from the survey are expected to help States and cities to understand gaps and provide course corrective measures.
IA Champion of Change certificate will be rewarded to the participants at the end of the survey.
