World Toilet Day: 18m Karachiites deprived of public toilets facility

KARACHI: A spectacle of a man crouching down in front of a wall, along a street corner or behind a tree can easily make passers-by get what the person is up to Ð while being this indecent practice become routine in Karachi, the civic authorities never bothered to consider a need for decent public toilet system.

A World Toilet Day is observed every year on November 19 to raise global awareness of the struggle of 2.6 billion people facing every day without having access to proper and clean sanitation worldwide.

The indecent practice of open defection Ð especially in slum localities Ð and sight of a man relieving himself at any street corner in the city not only raises the need of having public toilets but also demands protecting millions of lives from various diseases emerge after being exposed to human excreta. As experts say, there are more than 500 slums in the city accounting to around 40% of total metropolitan population.

According to United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), every day, about 1,100 Pakistani children under the age of five die of diarrhea and diseases related to water, sanitation and hygiene. It says a clean environment is very difficult to ensure if open defecation is practiced even by a minority of the population.

Civic experts, who talked to PPI, reacted with critical views while commenting on absence of toilets facility at public places including shopping malls, parks and bus stops. In a sarcastic manner, they said people utilize place as a toilet wherever it is clearly and strictly instructed not to use it for the said purpose.

A few public toilets are established in Karachi with most of them are in parks, while at more than 200 bus stops no such facility is available. Interestingly, toilets in mosque vicinities usually serve as public toilets, though in most cases they are opened only in prayer hours.

Ronald Dsouza of Shehri says the population of Karachi increased manifold in last five years, but civic facilities were not provided in the correspondence manner.

According to Dsouza, the public toilet project, if initiated, would face a setback due to tradition of poor upkeep of infrastructure not least by citizens and lack of adequate water facility for the purpose.

Realizing the importance of the most neglected civic facility for the public, Dsouza strongly emphasized initiating public toilet project covering all public places especially shopping malls and bus stops.

He said females often encounter difficulties during a hang-out due to non-existence of public toilets. ÒSuch problem begets urinary diseases among them as women prefer not to drink water before going out of home."

In April this year, the defunct City District Government Karachi had also directed EDOs to prepare a draft manuscript of bylaws so that the CDGK could devise a strategy to establish public toilets in the city.

In this regard, a three-member committee was also formed by then-DCO and now Administrator Karachi Municipal Corporation Muhammad Hussain Syed and it was assigned to make a policy for public toilets with the help of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). He had also stated the Karachi needed public toilets the most. But, dismally, the relevant officials now have no information regarding the development.

Many citizens and elderly people who spoke to PPI sounded similar concern for establishing public toilets. They demanded of the authorities to pay immediate heed into the matter for resolving their grievances.

A World Bank-funded project, Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), stated in its report recently that open defecation was on the decline worldwide, though the practice was still widely spread in South Asia, where an estimated 44 per cent of the population defecated in the open.--PPI