Jaising’s tweet turns spotlight on women’s toilets in MHC

Stressing that courts didn’t have decent toilets for women yet, singer Chinmayee posted a Happy Women’s day tweet on Sunday. Joining her on the thread of tweets on Jaising’s open letter, were other women who dished out their opinions on the washrooms in the court here.

When advocate Ajeetha Bakthavachalam was asked about this, she said, “There are about 15 toilets in the Madras HC which is definitely not sufficient for the number of frequenters.” She stressed that at least 1,100 women lawyers come to court, along with, 500 women litigators everyday who also make use of the toilets.

“It’s not the maintenance, but the sheer proportional disparage that is the issue, which cannot be solved by blaming the cleaning staff. Necessary budget and space allocations have to be made,” Ajeetha added. The number of toilets aren’t proportionate to the number of frequent users, agreed advocate Kavitha Rameshwari. “Although the Women Lawyers Association had requested only members to use certain toilets, even litigators use it because it’s more accessible than the pay and use toilets which are further away,” she said.

Advocate and women’s’ right activist Sudha Ramalingam said, “Women are just so used to going home for their nature calls that I think most just really don’t speak out if the toilets are unclean. Providing toilet papers, sanitary napkin dispensers and facilities for hygienic disposal of sanitary napkins is the need of the hour.” However, she revealed that the toilets are much better from when she started practice in 1978.