The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) today assured the Bombay High Court that it was taking immediate steps to provide clean and separate toilet facilities for boys and girls in civic schools in the city and suburbs.
Currently, only five schools are left which have no such toilet facilities for students, MCGM counsel Anil Sakhare told a division bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Anil Menon, which was hearing a suo motu (on its own) public interest litigation.
The bench asked MCGM to complete its task and file an affidavit by June 11 while deferring the hearing of the PIL till then.
The HC had taken cognisance of a letter written by activist Bhagwanji Raiyani who had sought better toilets and drinking water facilities in civic schools. He had attached a report which appeared in a newspaper on August 28, 2008, pointing out that there were no toilets in municipal schools.
The court had in November last year directed the state government to appoint two officers (not below the rank of section officers) to conduct surprise checks on civic schools to verify the claim of the municipal body that it was providing clean and separate toilets for boys and girls.
The officers were asked to visit the schools without giving notice to any municipal officer. The nominated officers were asked to file a report to the Court by December-end.
MCGM had later informed that separate toilets for boys and girls had been provided in over 1,200 civic schools. It further said that cleaning of schools, which are housed in big buildings, was outsourced to private agencies. Besides, there are water purifiers to provide clean drinking water. Water tanks are cleaned twice a year, the HC was told.
Raiyani had written the letter after reading an article in the newspaper titled: 'No loos lead to girls dropping out, says study.'
The study said "honour and health of women should be of paramount concern of any country. But the commercial capital, Mumbai, presents a dismal picture on the sanitation facilities for girls in its civic schools, which does not only lead to gynaecological diseases in them but also causes an astonishing dropout rate."
"Sixty per cent of BMC schools do not have proper toilets, some have no water in restrooms," it added.
