Pune: Rajeev Kher and Ulka Sadalkar from Saraplast Pvt Ltd in collaboration with Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had embarked on a journey towards providing sanitation for women in the year 2016 with a vision to provide better sanitation facilities to women. This mobile toilet named ‘Ti,’ which means ‘her’ in Marathi is in 12 different locations of the city and this duo is planning to expand it across the city in more locations.
Ulka Sadalkar, Executive Director, Saraplast Pvt Ltd, said, “Today, so many women are out working and travelling, thus a cleaner public toilet with basic sanitation facilities is very important. A woman faces a lot of hygienic problem due to improper sanitation and to address it, this initiative was started.”
Talking about the concept, Rajeev Kher, founder of Saraplast Pvt Ltd, said, “I have seen buses in the United States, which were used by homeless people and this idea to create toilets out of scrap buses came to me. So we had a meeting with PMC and brainstormed this idea to create toilets for lower income class women who do not have access to basic sanitation facilities and Ti came out.”
He further said, “Earlier, the concept of toilets was a taboo but with Swachh Bharat Abhiyan coming into existence, these issues are dealt with much sincerely.”
Ulka Sadalkar added, “PMC provided us with scrap buses and since we are in this business for so many years, these busses got refurbished at our manufacturing unit. It was a joint effort with PMC and solid waste management department to create sanitation facility for women.”
The buses are well equipped with basic facilities like clean washrooms and also a small space for breast feeding and diaper changing space. It also provides sanitary napkins to women with a television installed inside the toilet where information on UTI, menstrual hygiene and breast cancer is continuously played.
These toilets have an inbuilt water tank and run on solar energy. There is a female attendant in all these buses and a small café is also attached.
“Since we are also working with smart city initiative and all the data from usage of toilets to the usage of water goes to smart city centre, they also provide us with the locations where the footfall can be high so that we can expand this concept across the city.”
He further said, “As per the latest survey provided by them, there are 100-200 locations in Pune where toilets are required and we are keen on expanding in those locations. Hopefully, by the end of 2019, there will be at least 200 such buses in different locations,” said Rajeev Kher.
He further said, “Our Company is in sanitation business for last 20 years and we have been providing mobile and portable washrooms to cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, etc, and are also keen on expanding the concept of the female washroom in all the smart cities of India.”
Dyaneshwar Molak, head of Solid Waste Management Department, said, “These mobile toilets are very useful for women and it was very important to create something like this. We liked their idea and provided them with dead buses and will be providing more scrap buses in the future to assure a proper sanitation facility to women across the city.”
