CLEAN OPTION: A public convenience in Hyderabad. — Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

HYDERABAD: Some habits seldom change. If the board says a public urinal is a minute away, the stump of the board comes in handy for many!

This is when the one-minute away public toilet matches the standards of a star hotel in cleanliness, and is aeons ahead of the filthy ones that overpowers surrounding neighbourhoods.

30 more in pipeline

The old ones are still around, with kilos of bleaching powder dumped around them as part of the intensified sanitation drive. In the meanwhile, 30 more designer toilets are in the pipeline.

These will be in addition to around 200 new ones that are already in the job of attempting to change the `relieving' habits of Hyderabadis.

However, the question is, even if one hundred more such facilities come up, will it change those who `do' it in the open? For instance, wait for a few minutes at the bus stop near the traffic signal under the CTO flyover, leading to the Paradise junction. There is a modern public toilet at the turning. Even then, there are some who just do not bother to walk a couple of steps and shell out Re.1. The dim roadside is what they prefer.Testimonies of how doing it in the modern toilet is better than the brazen public act are difficult to obtain and rarely come forth on blogs or feedback columns of ourmch.com. How then will the fear of law, and etiquette, be drilled in?

"Heavy fines should be slapped on those who relieve themselves in public, even when the authorities are providing the citizens with good facilities. That is how they do it in other countries. But the idea is yet to gather steam here," says one of the contract managers of the modern toilets on SP Road.

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