Public toilet plans go down the drain

KARACHI: World Toilet Day was observed across the globe on Saturday but lack of sanitation facilities continues to affect people in Karachi. Even after budget allocation, the government has made no serious effort to initiate public toilet schemes. Only 30 of the 124 toilets across the city are functional, reveal official figures.



“No one knows about the rest of the public toilets,” said an official of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), requesting anonymity. In fact, most of the toilets have now been turned into shops, he added. According to Agha Syed Attaullah, the chairperson of Rah-e-Rast Trust, there were public toilets for both men and women at Karachi’s Empress Market but the female toilets have been encroached upon. “In critical times, the female shoppers are compelled to use male toilets,” he said.

Deprived facility

According to a research report, titled ‘State of World’s Toilet’ published by WaterAid, about 700 million urban dwellers around the world are living without sanitation facilities, of which 12 million belong to Pakistan.

The problem is so massive that about 48,000 people living in Pakistan’s towns and cities have no choice but to defecate in the open using roadsides, railway tracks and even plastic bags, which have been dubbed ‘flying toilets’, stated the report.

However, Pakistan is making progress in helping its urban population gain access to public toilets. Since the 1990s, the proportion of urbanites living without sanitation has halved, and it now also ranks seventh in the world for the country making the most progress in reaching urban populations with toilets.



Mentioning the importance of hygiene, the report also states “One child dies every two minutes from diarrhoeal diseases caused by dirty water, poor sanitation and hygiene.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2016.