The Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) collaborated with the tech-giants to ease the pain of finding public toilets in NCR and Madhya Pradesh areas, to begin with. So far, the government agencies working towards developing a full-fledged app for toilet locators in India have been able to locate 2 lakh units and are also going to include public toilets in private building too. Last month, there were rumours that such an app was being developed for India which will allow people to locate clean public toilets, and it’s official now.
More Cities Will Get the Service Overtime
Currently, there are about 4000 toilets that have been displayed on the Google Maps interface which can be searched either from your Android or iOS Maps app or using the desktop. All you need to do is open Google Maps, search for public toilets and the closest ones will be listed alongwith the address, distance from your location, and opening and closing time. “When you search for a public toilet on Google Maps in an area where the service is available, you’ll see a list of the restrooms near you, including the respective address and opening hours. For instance, if you’re travelling on the national highway 8 in Gurugram, locating a public toilet can be challenging and most often the only option is going to a nearby restaurant and cafe. Having this information handy can make things much easier,” said Sanket Gupta, Product Manager, Google Maps. Users have the ability to rate and review the toilets, include suggestions and will also find photographs to judge the cleanliness before going there. The company has specified that the services will currently be available in New Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Faridabad in NCR and Indore and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Google also mentions that ‘the Ministry of Urban Development plans to continue to provide information about public restrooms for more cities’.
