In response to the Human Resource Development Ministry’s appeal for corporate help to construct toilets in schools, especially for girls, Bengaluru-based carmaker Toyota Kirloskar Motor has zeroed in on schools in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Vaishali in Bihar.

“We plan to construct 500 sanitation units in schools, with 250 in Varanasi and Vaishali, of which 100 toilets are expected to be built by March 31 this year,” Shekar Viswanathan, Vice-Chairman and Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd, who was in Delhi recently, told Business Line .

Incidentally, Varanasi is the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp of Japan, the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) spend in these areas entails construction and maintenance of toilets, for which it plans to rope in its car dealers in the region.

“We have dealerships in these areas and we need somebody to supervise the maintenance of these toilets. We need someone local there, as we can’t be sending teams from Karnataka. So, the monitoring will be done by our dealerships,” he said.

The company has one dealer in Varanasi, as of now, he said, adding that overall the company had 300 dealers across the country.

The company picked the schools in Varanasi and Vaishali from a list posted on the HRD Ministry’s website.

Viswanathan said Toyota Kirloskar selected these two areas for the sanitation project as it was setting up water purification projects there as well. “We are basically piggy-backing on our water purification projects, which we are taking up following incidences of water-borne diseases in these areas, he said.

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