2012-07-28 : Hamara Manch Update: On toilets for workers

(Related Pages: Amenities.)

    In April 2011 Hamara Manch had circulated a note on the status of toilet facilities (or rather the lack of it) for workers and other service providers in IIT Kanpur. Some concerned members of the alumni community passed it on to the Institute administration and when it was confirmed that there actually are no toilet facilities for the thousands of workers and service providers, the concerned alumni urged the administration to immediately take remedial action. The concerned members of alumni kept reminding the administration to provide toilet facilities on different occasions. In July 2012 the administration informed the alumni that ‘nine toilets have been specifically designated for use of workers (apart from academic area and hostel ones)’, and also provided a list for the same. The following is a summary of the report by Hamara Manch (pdf of the full report with the locations and photographs of the toilets can be downloaded from: http://bit.ly/MSmrA3) on the toilet facilities claimed to be provided for workers in the Institute.

Information Regarding Toilets among the Workers

• Hamara Manch has been working with the workers but we had no idea regarding the toilets till we were informed by the alumni.

• Since then we have asked several workers and service providers about the toilets and none of them had been informed about this facility which apparently is designated for them.

• Barring a couple of toilets most of them have been there for a while and have been merely marked as being designated for workers in the communication made to alumni. The workers have not been informed about the new status.

• It must be mentioned here that it took considerable efforts over several days to locate these toilets.

Access of the Toilets

    When Hamara Manch located the nine toilets on the map of IIT Kanpur we found that most of the toilets are located along the main road, residential areas and the offices. Actually none of the toilets are located in areas where bulk of the workers and service providers could have access.

• Most of the designated toilets are located in exclusive premises – like the maintenance office, substation, AC plant, etc., encircled with barbed fences and hence out of bounds for anyone other than employees and workers employed specifically in the office.

• When HM volunteers attempted to use some of the facilities they were denied access.

• Most of these premises are locked beyond the office hours of 10 am to 5 pm while workers work almost round the clock in the campus.

• Except for the facility at the Shopping Complex there are no separate facilities for women.

• Women employed in men’s hostel have no access to toilets. And men employed in women’s hostel have limited access to toilets.

• Bulk of the workers in horticulture, civil maintenance and domestic help, vendors, rickshaw pullers, visitors, other service providers have hardly access to any toilet.

• The toilets apparently designated for them are actually one to two kilometres away from their work place and given the fact that there are no official rest breaks allowed (actually workers have been given baithki for taking drinking water breaks) the facilities are basically out of bounds for the workers.

• It has been claimed that the toilets in the Academic area and Hostels are accessible to all. It is true that workers who are employed in these premises do use this facility though often not as a right. The premises (both the hostels and the AA) have been impregnably walled and are guarded like fortresses. When we checked with SIS guards whether they would allow anyone to use the toilet in the academic area or the hostel premises they categorically said they would not. They told us that they have strict instructions not to allow anyone without proper authority inside these premises under any circumstances. It is very unlikely that a contract worker or a service provider would brave these formidable hurdles to use the facilities.

• Incidentally the security guards who have very exacting duty hours also have very limited access to toilets. They are not allowed to move from their post at all and there are only a few toilets designated for them which are usually several hundred metres away. Hence to take a toilet break a guard has to seek a substitute and only when someone comes to relieve him can he take a rest break. There are around 250 - 300 guards for the campus.

To Conclude

• The list of toilets ‘designated’ for workers was provided to the alumni and yet no effort has been made to disseminate the information to the workers.

• The toilets have not taken into cognisance the convenience of workers, the most basic being location near their work sites. Actually the workers have not been even consulted for the exercise. Most of the facilities have no provision for women users.

• This complete lack of correlation with the needs of workers can be easily explained by the fact that several of the toilets actually are existing facilities, located inside gated premises and exclusively for the use of staff of the specific department.

    It is appalling that not only the Institute was unaware that workers need to use toilets for over 50 years, but it could not even construct adequate and accessible toilets for its workers in over 12 months since the issue was specifically raised in April 2011.  During the same period, several large constructions have been initiated and completed in the campus. Thus we are compelled to conclude that the whole exercise is merely to allay the concerns of the alumni – most of the contract workers, service providers, and domestic help working in the Institute still do not have the right to use toilets in the campus.