VIJAYAWADA: The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) will, on an experimental basis, auction the rights for collecting fines for open defecation and urination.

Municipal Commissioner Natarajan Gulzar said here on Saturday that the granting of auctioning rights to private parties for collection of fines on behalf of the VMC was a legally accepted method and some cities were already doing it.

Problem zones

Seven zones confronting this problem had been identified and the right to collect fines would be given to private contractors who quote the highest amount in the auction.

Meanwhile, the VMC was trying to provide public toilets and urinals. Currently, there were 22 pay-and-use toilets, 161 free urinals and 525 free latrines at different locations in the city. While the pay-and-use toilets were being maintained by non-governmental organisations, the VMC was paying contractors Rs. 1.40 lakhs per month for maintaining the free urinals and latrines, Mr. Gulzar said.

Pay and use

Ten toilets being constructed by philanthropist Gokaraju Ganga Raju were nearing completion. The VMC was constructing five toilets on build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. These toilets would be in the pay-and-use mode. Tenders had been called for the construction of 272 urinals and latrines at 63 different locations in the city as part of an effort to make Vijayawada an open-defecation-free city, Mr. Gulzar said.

Toilets would be provided to households under the low-cost sanitation scheme. Over 4,000 applications which were pending with the VMC would be sanctioned under the scheme. But, most of the applicants were families living on encroached sites on hill slopes, canal-bunds or on the banks of the Krishna. Most of them were not being considered eligible for low-cost sanitation scheme because they were not property tax assessees. But the VMC would consider them as beneficiaries in future and sanction latrines because they were paying `superstructure tax', Mr. Gulzar added.

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