CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation is aiming for a clean sweep to tackle problems of female hygiene and access to sanitation — special ‘ She Toilets ’ have been planned for women in 348 locations across the city and will be opened by the end of the year. They will also be the first e-toilets (electronic, fully automated toilets) in the city. The toilets will have sanitary napkin vending machines and incinerators.

“This is also the first time Chennai Corporation has done a detailed survey and mapping of where public toilets are required and where the public oppose it,” said a senior corporation official. “Earlier the corporation would only ask the zonal engineer where to put up a toilet.” These 348 locations include bus stands, markets and open spaces.

The toilets will come as a relief to women who work outdoors all day such as vendors, construction workers and police officers. “We have to stand on the road for at least five hours while on bandobast duty,” said Leela Sri, a woman constable. “There are very few public toilets that we can use and most of them are filthy.” Leela, who has been on the job for 11 years, said she and her female colleagues are prone to urinary tract infections and fibroids. “If more of these toilets for women come up, the next generation of policewomen need not face such health problems,” she says. Kerala State Women’s Development Corporation recently introduced these toilets.

The most attractive feature of the e-toilet is that it flushes automatically even if a person fails to flush. “It is fully automated and after five uses, the unit automatically cleans up the entire toilet. The fans and lights turn on and off a person enters and leaves,” said Suneetan Nair, marketing officer, Eram Scientific, a Trivandrum-based firm that developed the product for Kerala, and one of the bidders for the project in Chennai.

To prevent vandalism and encroachment of public toilets, the She-Toilets will have GPRS devices. “All units have will have a GPRS device to alert the officials concerned in case of theft or vandalism,” Nair said. “It also has a voice complaint system where a person can simply press a button and record a complaint about the toilet,” he said.

Chennai currently has a little over 900 public toilets, inadequate for its 65 lakh population. “We tried public- private partnerships to help maintain toilets but it failed. Now we will form a public toilet monitoring wing in the corporation for existing toilets,” the official said. With the help of a non-governmental organisation, the corporation will conduct a 20-day survey to study the problems of existing toilets. “We know that the city is short of 2,000 toilets,” the official said. “We will ensure this is corrected by March 2015.”