It may be a cholera scare for the corporation and the rest of the city, but for residents of the diarrhoea pockets of Boopathy Nagar and Osonkullam, life goes on.

A day after the corporation announced that three people from different parts of the city had tested positive for cholera, everything was the same in the slum — naked toddlers relieving themselves in every corner, open barrels full of yellowish water lying outside every house and thousands of flies swarming everywhere, settling on the faces and hands of the people, who did not seem to notice at all.

Six days after the first diarrhoea outbreak in Chetpet, the corporation is still reporting fresh cases despite supply from the allegedly contaminated piped water being cut off.

“As long as these people continue to defecate in the open, along the railway tracks, they will continue to fall sick even if we provide them with clean water,” said a corporation official. However, for hundreds of families living in one-room huts here, the railway tracks are the nearest they have to a public toilet.

The only public toilet in Osonkullam has been boarded up and blocked with rubble for over a year now. “We have asked them to demolish this toilet building; nobody here can use it. After it was opened, nobody was employed to clean or guard the place. It is now condemned, and a big nuisance to us.

Women cannot even pass by the toilet at night because it is taken over by groups of strange men who drink and smoke ganja inside,” said Ms Vasantha, who lives opposite the ramshackle toilet. “The local authorities have told us that it will be converted into a ration shop,” she added.

The garbage-filled space alongside the tracks, which are hardly 100 metres from Chetpet station, continues to stink of faeces and urine — now mingled with the pungent smell of bleaching powder generously sprinkled by corporation staff.

“During the day, this place is infested with flies and after 6 pm, the mosquitoes take over. We have been living here for 60 years, but it is only after the diarrhoea outbreak and cholera case that the local councillor visited us,” said Mr Manikandan, a watchman whose home has a colour TV but no disinfectant soap — not even a bottle of phenol.

Most public toilets in city unusable

On the three square-foot stretch of tiled floor outside the public latrine in Trustpuram stays a Nepali family, a father, mother and their three-year-old son. “I am looking for a job and we don’t have anywhere to stay. We pay rent to live here and find it safer than sleeping on the pavement. Please don’t make us leave,” said the man, unwilling to divulge the rent amount or to be photographed. “This toilet is not that dirty, not many people use it,” he defends his temporary home.

“I don’t believe that a Chennai public toilet could be clean enough to live in, most of them are not even clean enough to take a leak in,” says Rajesh, a teenager who frequents the gaming parlour next to the toilet. “When I have to go, I go near the canal, in the open,” he says, pointing at the black rivulet that eventually joins the Coovum after traversing Choolaimedu. “I don’t want to get diseases by going into the public toilet.”

“In most areas, people urinate and defecate in the open because of lack of usable public conveniences. However, urinating on the streets is acceptable in our country, everybody tolerates it and nobody objects. As a result, even people who do have access to a toilet find it more convenient to do their business outdoors,” says Mr Somya Sethuraman, a researcher with Transparent Chennai. Through an RTI query, Mr Somya’s team found that Chennai only had 715 toilets in 2010 — a situation that has not changed much.

“We mapped Zone 4, which includes the congested areas of Ayanavaram and Purusaiwakam in north Chennai. There were 49 public toilets catering to a population of over 4 lakh. Most of them were not maintained well and many were kept locked at night,” added Mr Somya, pointing out that the number of women and children using these conveniences was negligible.

According to the report, residents found the toilets to be unsafe – the doors were either broken or missing, there was insufficient or no lighting, and the stink from the blocked sewers unbearable.
“The toilets were not properly located, some areas had many toilets clustered together while others had none. It seems like the corporation has constructed the toilets according to their convenience; wherever it was easiest to get the land or build sewers and not according to the needs of the people living there,” said Somya, working for the government to help implement the sanitation policy.

AIADMK flayed at council meet

There was chaos at the Chennai corporation council on Wednesday as the Opposition DMK blamed the ruling AIADMK for the cholera scare and diarrhoea breakout.

Opposition councillors, who staged a walkout, told reporters that they were not allowed to raise issues related to public health in the council hall. Even as DMK floor leader Subhash Chandra Bose raised the issue of the cholera outbreak in several parts of the city owing to poor sanitation, Mayor Saidai Duraisamy charged Mr Bose with failing to inform the officials of his ward in this regard. He also challenged the DMK councillor to complain to the authorities regarding lack of co-ordination, if any.

Reacting to recent news of diarrhoea and cholera cases reported in the city, the mayor said, “The news of 29 deaths published in a few newspapers lacked credibility. The corporation had launched a drive a fortnight ago to control houseflies that cause communicable diseases such as cholera, dysentery etc.”

“People diagnosed with diarrhoea and cholera are being treated at the Kilpauk Medical Hospital and the Communicable Diseases Hospital in Tondiarpet. Several patients have recovered from the illness and returned home. Steps are being taken to clear garbage in the affected areas.

"Chlorine tablets are being supplied to every household. Medical camps are being conducted to create awareness about the disease. It’s a regular phenomenon in any city to have incidents of acute diarrhoea and a few stray cases of cholera, but a few media organisations are blowing the issue out of proportion creating panic among people,” he added.

The mayor also denied the allegations levelled by former Mayor M. Subramanian against the AIADMK government.