Bhubaneswar: The municipal corporation has received 7.54-lakh feedback, mostly positive ones, from the users of public and community toilets on their cleanliness. The votes were received with feedback devices installed in the toilets.
However, a reality check done by The Telegraph on Friday of those toilets and the feedback devices revealed a different story. The buttons on these devices - green if you are happy, red if your view is negative and yellow for neutral - could be pressed any one any number of times.
A caretaker of such a toilet at Mali Sahi said the toilet was not clean at all. He said: "People do not use the seats and continue to defecate outside. Sometimes, they defecate on the roof of the toilet complex. The sludge is also released straight into the adjacent open drain. I have no idea how could anyone tag this facility as clean."
He also demonstrated the use of the device. He called some random children and asked them to press the buttons.
"I have tried to ask the people to use the toilets properly, but no one listens. It is very difficult to maintain this particular toilet complex," he said.
The report of the positive feedback got featured on the Twitter handles of the ministry of housing and urban affairs and Swachh Bharat Mission on Thursday.
"Bhubaneswar has a population of about 9 lakh and it is difficult to believe that about 8 lakh of them used the nine odd toilets and voted positive on its cleanliness," said Unit-I resident Alok Mishra.
The sham doesn't end here. It continue to bypass the directive of the ministry of housing and urban affairs on installing feedback devices at all public and community toilets and get featured on the Swachh Toilet dashboard of the Centre. The aim of the move is to monitor cleanliness and instil a sense of competition among cities.
So far, the civic body installed these feedback devices at only nine toilet complexes while there are 175 functional toilets in the city. "We have started the process to install the devices in the public toilets. It will be done in phases. We have identified 45 other toilets for installation of these devices," said a civic official.
