Slum upgrading in Tamil Nadu, India
Updated - Monday 05 January 2004
TiruchirappalliCity, located in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, has 155 slum areas that house 115,000 people. Poor maintenance and sporadic investment has led to an objectionable state of water supply and sanitation services.
In the mid 1980s, the Municipal Water Corporation, a State entity, built community latrines for the slum areas; however these were poorly managed and maintained, and fell into disrepair. Consequently, users instead chose locations around the latrine or even on the riverbanks to defecate, which impacted public health. Still, the people were not supportive of an idea for the Municipal Water Corporation to build more latrines, expecting that the funding would support building the latrines, rather than maintaining them.
A local NGO, Gramalaya, which worked with eight slums in TiruchirappalliCity, and which is affiliated with WaterAid, discussed the situation with women's self-help groups, including how a system could be better managed, and how it could be funded. They intended to fund a programme to demolish the existing latrines and build new ones, with women's self-help groups to provide maintenance.
In one of the meetings with the groups, a scheme was suggested to install a pay-and-use toilet - charging users for the maintenance fees (such as cleaning materials, cleaners, and a ticket issuer/watchman) and to use the facility. After assessing the costs, it was decided that 50 paise (US$0.010) per use would be enough to support recurring costs.
With the help of WaterAid, which provided Gramalaya with a grant of close to US $8,000 (380,000 rupees), the scheme was able to construct latrines in each of the 8 slum areas that could serve up to ten women and ten men, along with a child-friendly stall. The latrine used existing infrastructure from the previous latrines built by the Municipal Water Corporation and, if soak pits were unavailable, WaterAid provided additional funding to cover those capital costs.
Under this new structure, the self-help groups organized into Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SHE) teams to maintain the latrines. A paid watchman/ticket issuer was hired, along with cleaners. Bank accounts were opened under each SHE team's name for the collected money. The SHE teams keep a ledger to track the number of people who use the facility and the amounts of money collected, and money is deposited each week into the account. Every month, each SHE team hosts a meeting to disclose the details of deposits and expenses of the account to the community, to build trust and accountability through transparency.
Overall, the programme has been a success. On average, 300-600 people use the toilets every day, generating 150-300 rupees per day for the system. Users frequent the latrines because they are clean and safe. All the SHE teams report surpluses in their accounts, which have been used to finance construction of a community hall, domestic drains, street water taps, street lighting, rubbish bins, and other health and sanitation activities. Equally promising has been the use of the SHE teams' surpluses as loans to support the capital costs of building latrines in other slum areas, reducing dependence on grant funding for start-up. Members of experienced SHE teams are often asked for advice on establishing new latrine schemes.
On the other hand, the Municipal Water Corporation has not expressed support for the pay-and-use latrine scheme, and policy frameworks have not adjusted to scale up the success or lend further encouragement.
For further information
See: Wateraid
Contact: WaterAid
Prince Consort House
27-29 Albert Embankment
London, SE1-7UB, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 207 779 345 00
