JOIN USEveryday, 24-year-old Moina has to go through the embarrassment of attending to nature’s call in the open as the nearby public toilet gets closed at 10 pm.
“All the females have to go the loo in the open as the public toilet gets closed at night and opens at 5 am,” she said.
She has been staying at a shelter on Lodhi Road behind Sai Baba Mandir for over a year. The shelter home houses between 35 and 50 person and over 200 people spend night at a nearby area.
Giving the much needed relief to such homeless, the Delhi Urban Development department has decided to keep toilet complexes’ operating nearby a shelter home open throughout the night.The department is planning to prepare a list of the areas where the community toilet complexes (CTC) are situated nearby shelter homes. It will then ask the civic agencies who run them to keep them open throughout night.
NGOs operating night shelters said the public loos nearby the night shelters are found shut at night.
“The public toilets are shut at night and it causes great inconvenience to females,” said Sunil who operates the Lodhi Road shelter.
Be it Majnu Ka Tila, Himmat Garh near Ramlila Maidan or any other area, toilet complexes are found shut nearby shelter homes, he added.
Refuting the claim, a North Corporation spokesperson said, “The CTCs are functioning throughout the night near railway station and bus stands. Public loos situated nearby shelter homes are open at night.”
Though the civic agencies said the distance of the shelter home from the toilet complex also matters.
“Some of the shelters have been opened recently and more are coming up. We will look into the matter and if a new shelter has come up nearby a public toilet we will make sure the facility remains open throughout the night,” he added.
Porta cabin
The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board has said that the process of replacing temporary night shelters with porta cabin has begun.
“We have sent teams and the work has been started at 25 spots,” said director DUSIB, Kamal Malhotra.
“We expect to finish the work of putting up of 25 porta cabin shelters within a week’s time.”