In 2020, the TBC released “Star Rated Public Toilets: TBC Guidelines“, with the objective to share recommendations on how to build, maintain and use public toilets with the user experience at the forefront.
In addition to guidelines and recommendations, the publication also featured a self-assessment and audit checklist, to be used by toilet entrepreneurs and operators to guide their work.
This document has been implemented at a pilot scale in India since then, with the ambition to publish a revised version in 2022, incorporating learnings from this pilot.
Results from the first survey:
The survey was shared with our cohort companies on 1st Oct and we received data from 84 sites serving 6711 customers daily across India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Zambia.
All sites have signages that are clear and visible and where possible, there are separate entrances for men and women. However, a majority (71%) of these sites are not accessible to differently abled users
All sites reportedly have clean walls, floors and absence of malodor but 42% of them do not have resource/water saving measures and almost 70% of the sites present an opportunity to install educational materials.
While most of the sites reportedly have clean WCs, latches, bag/coat hooks, etc., nearly two thirds of them do not have clean, dry, odorless sanitary bins with liners.
When it comes to safety, all the sites have fully functional internal and external lighting, walls and ceiling intact and no loose electrical wires. However, non-invasive, privacy respecting surveillance is absent at 52% of sites. With respect to pandemic appropriate behavior, it is observed that at 25% of these sites users are not wearing masks and at 40% sites they are not sanitizing their hands while entering and leaving the sanitation facilities. At two thirds of these sites, common surfaces touched by users are not sanitized every 2 hours with a disinfectant.
Finally, nearly 15% of the sites do not have user feedback devices.
This is the first cut from the data gathered in Oct 2021. Going forward our cohort companies would be undertaking the self-assessment of their facilities every quarter which would help us refine the Star Toilet Guidelines and share insights periodically.
