Bhubaneswar, May 21: If you have difficulty locating a public toilet in the city, simply open GoogleMaps on your smart phone and locate the nearest facility.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to introduce this service to help residents and keep the city clean.

The service will be launched in October.

Citizens can use the service by downloading a smart phone application called GoogleMaps Toilet LocatorApp. While searching for the toilet, the users will have to open the app and Google will detect the user's location and provide information on the nearby toilets.

The Google toilet locator is an initiative of the ministry of urban development. The service was launched in five Indian cities - Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Noida -in December last year. The ministry has now decided to expand the project and have the same service for the residents of 85 more cities including Bhubaneswar.

The Quality Council of India (QCI), an agency hired by the Union ministry, will help the civic body officials in the process of introducing the service to citizens.

"We have got the direction from the ministry to collaborate with the QCI and implement the initiative for the launch in October. Their officials will come and we will provide the information after which the toilets will be geo-tagged," said a civic body official. At present, the BMC has 40 community toilets and 32 public toilets of its own while another 27 public and 26 community toilets are under construction in various parts of the city under Project Samman. Besides, the civic body is also collaborating with the Sulabh International for execution of the hybrid toilet project to construct 150 hybrid toilets in city in the next three years.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said finding a toilet would become easier upon the introduction of this service. "We are committed to ensure complete hygiene for the residents. We have toilets across the city, but sometimes people find it difficult to trace the facility. With the GoogleMap app, residents are going to find it easier to locate the nearest restroom and help us keep the city clean," said Jena.

The civic body had introduced a similar service last year with the help students of a city-based engineering college, but it did not take off properly because of lack of awareness about the app.

"Awareness is very important to achieve milestones in cleanliness. I hope the new initiative will work since it has been taken up by the popular technology giant Google," said Jagamara resident Pratibha Patel.