Despite Gujarat Chief Minister’s sincere attempts to ensure toilet in every home, slum-dwellers in Gujarat’s most populated city are finding it difficult. It requires a token payment of Rs 2-3 to defecate in such toilets, but a cost of defecation of a joint family of slum-dwellers reaches up to Rs 30 per day.
“Which they find unaffordable and they prefer to defecate in open”, said Puroshottam Waghela, director of an Ahmedabad based NGO Manav Garima during a review meeting of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). One of the agenda of the meeting was to construct toilets across the city to stop open defecation in the city. A report brought out in May by WHO and UNICEF revealed that India has the highest number of people in the world — 597 million — defecating in the open.