We recently announced the launch of our 6th Suvidha centre at Ghatkopar in Mumbai. The Suvidha centre project is a public-private partnership of HUL with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and HSBC India. Established in 2016, the Suvidha centres provide access to hygiene and sanitation services to over 100,000 men, women & children in Mumbai every year. These centres are also designed to reuse and recycle water and have saved over 35 million litres of water since inception.
With accelerated urbanization, Indian cities face immense pressure of providing proper access to hygiene and sanitation facilities to all citizens. The lack of basic sanitation and safe drinking water is a primary cause of cholera, diarrhoea, and several preventable deaths. In such a scenario, improving access to good sanitation services is critical.
Suvidha, the first of its kind urban community hygiene & sanitation centre by HUL, helps supplement the government's efforts to ensure that good quality sanitation services are available to urban low-income households in Mumbai.
Like the other five centres, the 6th Suvidha centre in Ghatkopar provides its users with an array of amenities. The toilet facilities are inclusive by design, and the centre offers safe, private, hygienic, and odour-free toilet facilities for women, men, children and people with disabilities. The centre also gives users access to handwashing stations, clean drinking water and subsidized laundromat services. In addition, HUL conducts behaviour change programmes on water, sanitation, health, nutrition & hygiene in the communities around the centre. The new centre will cater to over 20,000 users yearly.
The new centre will also treat and reuse grey and black water at a community toilet level and is designed to save 10 million litres of fresh water annually by reusing the treated wastewater through the water-saving process.
As India treads on the development path and strives to provide a prosperous and equitable future to all, the Suvidha model will ensure that #GoodHygieneForAll is now a reality.