Bhubaneswar: The central government's Google Toilet Locator app does not work in the city because the civic body has failed to geo-tag the facilities here.

Google Toilet Locator is a smartphone application developed by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs that enable people to find a nearby public or community toilet.

The Centre had selected the city to introducing the service in May last year, following which a Quality Council of India team came to Bhubaneswar in November to train the civic body officials on how to geo tag the toilets.

But so far, the authorities have geo tagged only 10 toilet facilities in various parts of Bhubaneswar. Only those are showing up on the application while the others are not.

Sources said the toilets where the civic body had installed the feedback devices are only showing in the app.

"We had geo-tagged 10 facilities even before the app was introduced. We have put those in the app," said a civic body official.

The civic authorities have increased the number of toilets in the past one year. At present, there are as many as 120 functional toilet complexes in the city apart from the ones run by Sulabh International.

An official said in order to geo tag the facilities, the civic authorities needed to provide a unique ID to each toilet complex and link the same with a control room at the headquarters.

"The Centre is organising further training for the officials and asked us to take part in it. We will send our officials for it. They will geo tag all the toilets for the benefit of the public," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

He said that most of the toilets were new and being constructed under the Hybrid Toilet and Project Samman schemes.

"We have doubled the number of toilets and are in the process to build more. All those will be compiled and geo-tagged in the app," said the mayor.