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Harpic Safe Sanitation Programme: Transforming School Hygiene Across India
New Delhi: Walking into many schools across India, it is clear that cleanliness often takes a back seat. Toilets that are clogged, broken taps, no soap, and dustbins that have long stopped being emptied are all too common. For students, especially girls, this can affect attendance and health.
Cleanliness Challenges In Indian Schools
Data shows about 75 per cent of schools are cleaned only once a month, and just 3 per cent of public schools use proper toilet cleaning products. Fewer than half have dedicated cleaning staff, with many relying solely on water or locally available materials. Government spending on toilet maintenance is less than Rs 1 per student per month, creating a funding gap of around Rs 13 per student.
Schools often lack basic facilities such as soap, dustbins, running water, and gender-appropriate toilets, while clogged drains and broken infrastructure further worsen hygiene. Most schools rely on composite grants or corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding rather than dedicated sanitation budgets.
Introducing The Harpic Safe Sanitation Programme
The Harpic Safe Sanitation Programme addresses these challenges, combining infrastructure upgrades, hygiene behaviour change, and workforce empowerment to create safe and child-friendly learning environments.
It builds on the Harpic World Toilet College (HWTC), which trains sanitation workers in modern cleaning practices and ensures dignified employment. Trained personnel are deployed in schools with proper tools, protective gear, and accountability measures to maintain high hygiene standards.
Programme Highlights
Power Of 8 Elements: The programme relies on eight key elements to ensure sustainable and high-quality sanitation:
- Funds – CSR investments directly support school sanitation.
- Scheduled Cleaning – Regular, monitored cleaning cycles maintain hygiene.
- Manpower – Skilled sanitation workers trained at HWTC are employed in schools.
- Supervisors – Oversight ensures quality and compliance.
- Soaps, Dustbins, Soap Cases – Essential hygiene infrastructure is provided.
- Drain De-Clogging – Functional and unclogged toilets.
- Live Tracker – Real-time monitoring of sanitation activities.
- School Data – Evidence-based insights improve programme design and scalability.
The Harpic Safe Sanitation Program
Hygiene And Behaviour Change
Hygiene awareness is promoted through interactive educational tools developed with Sesame Street India’s indigenous muppets. Children learn good practices via pop-up books, comics, bookmarks, posters, wall paintings, and classroom sessions. The programme encourages students to:
- Wash hands with soap
- Clean toilets after use
- Respect gender-specific facilities
Teachers and staff are to reinforce this behaviour.
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Empowering Sanitation Workers
The programme gives sanitation workers stable and respectful jobs. They receive fixed wages, social security, and safety gear to do their work properly. With the Hygiene Suraksha Passport, their skills and safety practices are officially recognised. Using modern cleaning tools makes the work safer and faster, while training and skill-building help workers grow in their careers and prosper in society.
The Harpic Safe Sanitation Programme is helping schools stay clean, safe, and welcoming for every child. By combining the Power of 8 Elements with hygiene education, it creates lasting benefits for students, teachers, and sanitation workers. This effort also supports India’s larger goals for better sanitation and education.
About Harpic
Harpic is a leading brand of toilet cleaning products owned by Reckitt, a global health and hygiene company. It was launched in the UK in 1932 by Harry Pickup, with the brand name derived from the first two syllables of his first and last names. Harry Pickup’s innovation in sanitation quickly gained popularity worldwide, and today Harpic is sold in over 60 countries, including India.
Harpic offers a wide range of products such as toilet cleaners, rim blocks, in-cistern blocks, and bathroom cleaners. The brand is known for its powerful formulas that remove tough stains, limescale, and germs, helping maintain hygienic and fresh toilets.
In India, Harpic is the number one toilet cleaning brand and is recommended by the Indian Medical Association for killing 99.9 per cent of disease-causing germs. Beyond products, Harpic actively participates in initiatives to improve access to clean toilets and promote hygiene awareness.
NDTV – Dettol have been working towards a clean and healthy India since 2014 via the Banega Swachh India initiative, which in its Season 10 is helmed by Campaign Ambassador Ayushmann Khurrana. The campaign aims to highlight the inter-dependency of humans and the environment, and of humans on one another with the focus on One Health, One Planet, One Future – Leaving No One Behind. It stresses on the need to take care of, and consider, everyone’s health in India – especially vulnerable communities – the LGBTQ population, indigenous people, India’s different tribes, ethnic and linguistic minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, geographically remote populations, gender and sexual minorities. In a world post COVID-19 pandemic, the need for WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) is reaffirmed as handwashing is one of the ways to prevent Coronavirus infection and other diseases. The campaign will continue to raise awareness on the same along with focussing on the importance of nutrition and healthcare for women and children, fight malnutrition, mental well-being, self-care, science and health, adolescent health & gender awareness. Along with the health of people, the campaign has realised the need to also take care of the health of the eco-system. Our environment is fragile due to human activity, which is not only over-exploiting available resources, but also generating immense pollution as a result of using and extracting those resources. The imbalance has also led to immense biodiversity loss that has caused one of the biggest threats to human survival – climate change. It has now been described as a “code red for humanity.” The campaign will continue to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and sanitation workers and menstrual hygiene. Banega Swasth India will also be taking forward the dream of Swasth Bharat, the campaign feels that only a Swachh or clean India where toilets are used and open defecation free (ODF) status achieved as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, can eradicate diseases like diahorrea and the country can become a Swasth or healthy India.
