To facilitate easily accessible, female-friendly public washrooms in the city, a tech-based social venture called Woloo has partnered with 1200 toilets to provide women with the much-required ‘hygiene dignity’ through safe, clean and accessible she-toilets. Women in Mumbai with the help of an app can now access clean and safe geo-tagged toilets in restaurants, café and salons within a two-kilometre radius of their location. Washrooms in hotels, restaurants, cafes that were initially accessible to patrons can now be used by non-customers without hesitation.
“Whenever there’s a conversation about hygiene access or public toilets, we always talk about slums and villages but urban working women face the same issues. Our team visited 300 public toilets in Mumbai out of which only 20 per cent were made for women, and not even a small fraction is usable. In Mumbai, 4 million travel by train every day. Many are on roads for hours and have no choice but to hold their urge. Many avoid drinking water and those who find a toilet, end up contracting infections,” stated Woloo’s co-founder and chief business officer, Manish Kelshikar in an interview with Times of India.
Woloo along with the Toilet Board Coalition has developed a grading system for these public toilets to ensure they meet the three crucial objectives, hygiene, safety and accessibility. Hosts have to go through a screening process before they are certified and geo-tagged. Along with the basics like training of the cleaning staff, waste management, and provision of soaps, sanitisers, bins, mirrors and tissues, these washrooms will use the smart sanitation technology called “remote stink sensors” which sniff out malodour.
The startup is also planning to launch facilities like powder rooms in metros and railway stations that will have certified and tagged washrooms with CCTV cameras, sanitary napkin dispenser, a baby feeding room, diaper changing station, a café and a store.
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