Poor response from people coupled with National Aids Control Society’s decision to stop the funds is behind Hindustan Latex Ltd’s decision to remove the over 1,500 condom vending machines it had installed in the city.
Poor response from people coupled with National Aids Control Society’s decision to stop the funds is behind Hindustan Latex Ltd’s decision to remove the over 1,500 condom vending machines it had installed in the city.
Hindustan Latex Ltd Family Planning Promotional Trust is the company responsible for maintaining these machines across India. The government has spent Rs2.57 crore in procuring and installing the machines across Mumbai.
There are 22 packets in one machine. HLL officials said that when the machines were launched in the city in 2007, on an average one packet was taken per day. This has dipped further after NACO stopped the funds in September.
Yogesh Singh, the HLL official looking after the project in Mumbai, said, “Now that the funds have stopped we are facing monetary problems too. Till September, we had our men checking on the machines daily. But now, we don’t have money to pay the staff.”
HLL has decided to discontinue the project if NACO fails to give it the new Condom Social Marketing project.
“We will rethink whether to continue the machines in the city only if NACO allows us to handle the CSM project where marketing of government condom brands will be done,” he added.
Also, the machines have been getting a very poor response from people. Of the 3,000-odd machines installed in the city, only 1,540 are functional; about 486 are damaged. “There are 14 location categories in the city, such as truckers point, shouchalays, railway stations, hospitals, police stations, market areas, bus stops etc. The best average take-off rate of condom packets from a machine per day is 0.9 in the L&T, Powai, area, the worst is zero around police stations and hotels,” said a HLL official.
Another official said, “We have been negotiating with NACO officials to change the machines’ locations to increase the take-off. Machines have been installed in public places, sometimes on roads and railway stations. Who wants to draw a condom in public glare?” The average revenue generated through condom sales is less than Rs2.76 lakh a year.
“The biggest problem we have faced in Mumbai is vandalism of machines. People break the machines to get money out of it. The spare parts are not available in Mumbai, and thus, it takes time to get them working again. Sometimes, customers are drunk, and if the machine is slow, they punch it and break it down,” he added.
Health activists have attributed the failure to the inappropriate installation sites. “People prefer chemist shops. They use a code word — raincoat — and the chemist understands,” said another official.
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