Mumbai: Mumbai University’s Kalina campus is facing maintenance issues in providing basic facilities to the students. While, on one hand students are dealing with dirty and unhygienic washrooms, there is also another issue of lack of sanitary napkins in the sanitary napkin vending machines across the campus.
MU has installed various sanitary napkin vending machines in the campus, but none of them work.
The health centre which should be providing this facility to the students, has a vending machine which has been reduced to the status of a show-piece for months now. According to the students, there has been no maintenance of the vending machine by the authorities. The centre also does not provide the students with sanitary napkins on demand if they ever need it.
An official from the health centre said, “students go outside the campus to buy the napkin if needed,” he added, “they install these things with great enthusiasm in the beginning but overtime no one even bats an eye to see if these things are working.”
In the Department of English, there is a sanitary napkin vending machine that is currently non-functional, while another washroom in the department lacks such a facility altogether.
Shreyasi Karapu, MA Part 2 student said, “We usually carry our own sanitary napkins because these machines never work.”
Some department does not have this facility at all
While speaking to another group of students to understand if they encountered any problems, they explicitly mentioned, "sanitary napkins are unavailable. We're uncertain if there's a vending machine in other restrooms too." When questioned about why they didn't raise the issue, they responded, "There's no point in raising an issue when the necessary item isn't available."
The Department of History doesn't possess a vending machine, nor does the Department of Persian, Philosophy, Physics, Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Department of Russian, and Sociology Department. Additionally, the Department of Commerce's washroom is closed. Thus, a lack of sanitary napkin vending machines is evident across various departments, posing a challenge for menstrual hygiene management within the institution.
