Commonwealth Games casualty: stink-free urinals

Manhole covers, public taps, fans in trains… now even toilets aren’t safe from thieves in the country.

Installing waterless, stink-free urinals on Delhi’s streets at Rs 4.5 lakh each ahead of the October Commonwealth Games had seemed a smart idea. Now these odourless toilets are being pinched from right under police’s noses, leaving no scent of the crime.

“It’s difficult to catch these people. Work on the Games is going on across the city; we cannot have guards at each and every corner to prevent these crimes,” a police officer said.

Civic officials were planning to set up 1,000 such urinals, each fitted with a cartridge that blocks odour, ahead of the Games. But they now fear there won’t be too many left by the time the event begins.

“The rate at which they are being torn apart, it’s seriously worrying,” an official said.

The thieves have been ripping the pipes and the bowls off the urinals’ concrete walls. Now the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has decided to build the urinals and lay the pipes but not install the bowls till the eve of the Games, when private security guards would be hired to man the toilets round the clock.

It’s not just the urinals. Even the high-mast streetlights being put up ahead of the Games at Rs 25,000 each are being stripped of their bulbs and wiring. The ornamental plants, costing Rs 2,500 each, being planted on the sidewalks as part of a beautification drive keep vanishing too.

“The Games are Delhi’s pride. It’s a shame that we have to hunt down Delhiites who are intent on keeping their own city ugly,” the police officer said.

The civic authorities and the Delhi government’s public works department say that at every site, something or the other goes missing every day.

The workers who arrive to plant saplings discover that those planted the previous day have been taken out. When they come to overlay the pavements with sandstone tiles (Rs 40 each), they find the entire pile of tiles has been stolen. Those on the job of fitting the new streetlights out with bulbs sometimes cannot find anything — the entire structure has been stolen.

A councillor said 40 fancy streetlights had been put up in her ward. Within days, 18 had been cleaned out of their bulbs and wiring.