Guardian minister of Mumbai suburban district Mangal Prabhat Lodha has ordered Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief Iqbal Singh Chahal not to cancel the tender process of Lot 12. Lodha in his letter to Chahal has said that under Lot 11 really good work of public sanitation was undertaken and hence tenders were floated for the next phase of work under ‘Lot 12’, as part of which approximately 14,000 public toilets will be constructed across Mumbai.
The tender process is in its last stage, but to construct better-quality public toilets, it was decided to get the work done by corporate houses. So the tender exercise for ‘Lot 12’ was kept on hold and new applications were sought from these corporate houses that are interested in this project. Lodha says this move is causing a lot of prfoblems for people as the project is getting delayed, which means locals have to wait for a basic facility like public toilets.
“PM Modi in his vision has always emphasised on having toilets in each house. We all are of the opinion that toilets for the common public should be of good construction quality but cancelling the tender process which is in the final stage is not the right thing to do. Hence I order you to complete this tender process and with the help of corporate houses, we should plan to have additional toilets constructed for common people. Resuming the tender process will help us to construct the toilets as early as possible and we can make the toilet facility available for common people of Mumbai very soon,” he wrote in his letter.
As per a survey in 2020, there was only one public toilet seat for every 752 men and 1,820 women in Mumbai. According to the Swachh Bharat Mission norms, the slum pockets should have one toilet seat for 35 males and 25 females. The BMC has plans to build more toilets to match the user and toilet ratio and has announced a proposal to construct 14,166 toilet seats under the slum sanitation programme in 2023-24.
After receiving several complaints regarding the inferior quality of work in the construction of public toilets across the city, the civic body had put on hold the tender to build the 14,166 toilet seats at 556 locations. The BMC decided to carry out the work under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or District Planning Development Council (DPDC). It invited tenders to construct public toilets under Lot 12 in May, with an estimated cost of Rs 394 crore. However, the process was delayed due to a lack of space in the city.
Several former corporators complained that public toilets at several places were in dilapidated conditions and needed immediate repairs. They wrote a letter to Lodha to intervene in the matter. Accordingly, a meeting was held in the minister’s new chamber in the BMC headquarters in the last week of July. The civic administration had clarified that the work had been put on hold as a few big companies had shown interest in building public toilets.
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