Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is constructing 200 standalone urinals across the city at an estimated cost of Rs 13 crore to curb open urination and improve sanitation in busy public areas. The civic body said 87 units have been completed, while work on the remaining facilities is underway.
The project covers all 67 wards, with at least three standalone urinals planned in each ward. Each unit is estimated to cost around Rs 6.5 lakh. The new facilities are being developed mainly in areas that lack adequate public sanitation infrastructure and record significant pedestrian movement.
The urinals will supplement Bhubaneswar’s existing network of 114 public toilets, which include both toilets and urinals. BMC additional commissioner Kailash Chandra Dash said locations were selected across the corporation’s three zones after identifying areas with high public footfall.
“No fee will be charged for using the urinals. User charges are applicable only in public toilets where toilet and bathing facilities are available,” Dash said.
The identified locations include Unit-I Market, Rasulgarh bus stop, Bapuji Nagar, the area near Nayapalli police station, Priyadarshini Market, Unit-VIII Boys’ High School, Indradhanu Market and CRPF Traffic Square. Several of the sites are located near commercial areas, markets, transport points and other destinations used by the city’s floating population.
The initiative follows a 2024 BMC survey that identified 168 “yellow spots” across Bhubaneswar. These were locations frequently used for open urination, including some where public facilities were already available. The spots included commercial zones, parking areas and areas near banks, hotels, cinemas, bus stands and railway stations.
BMC officials said some of the identified yellow spots have been included in the current construction programme. The civic body has also undertaken beautification and landscaping work at some of these locations alongside the construction of toilets and urinals.
Dash said the standalone facilities were intended largely for people visiting markets and other public places, as well as for residents and the city’s floating population. He said the civic body had observed that people sometimes continued to use open spaces even when toilets were available nearby, prompting the placement of urinals in vacant areas with heavy public movement.
The expansion places the emphasis on locating basic sanitation facilities close to the places where people travel, shop, wait for buses and access public services. BMC said it expects the additional infrastructure to reduce open urination and improve cleanliness across Bhubaneswar as construction of the remaining units progresses.
