Do you find bad toilet odour a major factor behind compelling users to shun community toiletsIJ Could badly smelling toilets indicate that there would be chances of infection from the sitesIJ How can toilets be more user-friendly and attract more users to use them and make our cities free from open defecation!
Experimental psychologist from Philadelphia, USA, Pamela Dalton, who is a faculty member of Monell Chemical Senses Centre, was in the city to study the smelling toilets and help the BMC and Project Samman devise ways to make the toilets usable and people-friendly.
Pamela and her team members are personally inspecting the toilet sites and with olfactometres finding out the level of the odour or smell of the toilets.
“What we observed in the temple city of Bhubaneswar is that people are not using the common toilets as they found the inside with pungent odour and some might be feeling that the odour could spread diseases or infections. But, in reality, the odour comes from a bacteria and with proper cleaning, use, maintenance and provision of funds to carry out such work, community toilets could be made user-friendly,’’ she explained.
Regarding the behavioural practice of the community, the American researcher of the unique subject, said, “We may bring in some changes through behaviour change communication (BCC) technique if we really adopt some good methods with the local population, their beliefs, practices in mind.’’
This is her fifth visit to India and so far she has visited States like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh and will be visiting West Bengal next. As the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation has funded the project, she will be studying why people are opting for adopting open field to defecate and not use the community toilets, instead.
Currently, as per the World Health Organisation data, India ranks as the nation with highest rate of open defecation in the world.
Meanwhile, the BMC signed MoU with various Ward Sanitation Committees for operation and maintenance of community toilets in slums. The MoU signed for four toilets are at Prasanti Vihar, Patia Jalimunda Sahi Panda Kudia area.