In one of the biggest drives to build public toilets in the state, the Telangana Municipal Administration Department has asked district collectors to begin construction of public toilets, including public-private partnership (PPP) toilets, in all urban local authorities (municipalities). With the latest toilets, the state is predicted to reach the 10,000 mark soon.

On Tuesday, the Chief Secretary of the Municipal Administration, Arvind Kumar, released a government order delegating powers to district collectors to district-level impanel agencies, which would undertake the construction of SSR rates as demanded by the district-level Committee of Engineers. The design of the toilets, whether stand-alone or group lavatories, including She-Toilets, will be decided by the district collector, GO said.

Arvind Kumar stated that there is a lot of emphasis on improving the lives of urban citizens, and the basic needs of the people should be met. Public toilets are a must, and the same needs to be built on priority.

The Government has announced that toilets in important commercial areas can be used in self-sustaining PPP mode on the Loo Café lines in Hyderabad, where they will be planned, installed, and maintained at their own expense by the Agency. Likewise, all public bodies, such as collector offices, SP offices, parks, the arrangement of open spaces, should be open to the general public.

According to the official estimate, depending on the configuration, each cost/seat ranges from 60,000 to 1,50 lakh. In GHMC, almost 20 percent, i.e., about 1,500 of the new toilets, are on the Build Operate and Move (BOT) basis, and the rest is on a cluster maintenance basis. There is a clustering approach to maintenance in many jurisdictions.