Junior Correspondent: Time to stop treating our roads as public toilets

There has been a massive drive to make the city clean. After the Swacch Bharat initiative, people have been conscious about the surroundings. At Swamy’s Higher Secondary School, Porur, where I study, we have been asked to be aware of the surroundings. Teachers have encouraged us to not only keep the school premises clean, but also other areas. As students, we follow the guidelines, but when we go out on the streets we see people making a mess of our city. 

The biggest problem for most students is people relieving themselves in public. The first step towards keeping the city clean is to start treating the public space as our homes. We would never think of attending to nature’s call anywhere they feel in a house, or in front of an audience! There are bathrooms for the purpose. Similarly, there are facilities in the city for people to relieve themselves. The Greater Chennai Corporation had recently installed several e-toilets and urinals throughout the city, but instead of using the facility, people continue to dirty the road. Strict action must be taken against them and there must be a campaign to stop this.