Oped»
Vanishing toilets
- NOTE OF DISSENT
MAR 28 -
Billboards in many parts of the city loudly claim that some 14 million Nepalis still use open air toilets to fulfil one of their most pressing daily needs. If what is claimed is true, almost half of the country's population lacks even the most rudimentary toilet facilities, and have to use open spaces like fields, farms, alleys and streets. The situation in the capital itself is none too encouraging with the city defaced not merely by political slogans written on every available wall or similar spaces but also littered with human excreta, not to mention animal waste of a similar kind.
A walk around the city's Tundikhel area, where the toilet billboards are prominently displayed, will be enough to convince anyone just how possible it is that the numbers mentioned in the billboard could indeed be true, and not an exaggeration as most tend to think it is. The activists, both individuals and organisations, that have been campaigning for a toilet (latrine) in every house perhaps know that the goal is a steep uphill task. This is so not just because most of us cannot afford a latrine at home but because we seem to have developed a surprising sense of neglect towards this every important aspect of hygiene and sanitation.
The neglect is not confined to the people, but more so to the government and the local authorities. Kathmandu Municipality which should be responsible for the upkeep of the city in all ways seem to have failed very miserably in the area of sanitation. Reports say that the municipality runs over two dozen public toilets. If so, where are they located? And are they free? It is common knowledge that most of those who resort to open defecation are the poor, and asking them to pay for use of public latrines and toilets is, in fact, telling them to use the open air.
The municipality or other local agencies that live on the city residents' taxes and other fees and charges cannot neglect this important sanitation issue. The municipality now also pockets land and house taxes, not to mention parking fees. Most of the revenue that any municipality or other legal local agencies collect should, by any common sense, go to the well being of the people. But this does not seem to be happening in the case of Kathmandu Municipality. But then the country's whole governance system seems to have turned a blind eye to the people's health, hygiene and sanitation concerns.
According to international agencies, less than 35 percent of the country's population had access to proper sanitation systems in the year 2004. It is now 2010, and things must have improved; but by how much? It is almost certain that less than half of the country's population today has the means to avail of proper sanitation facilities. Media reports in the past had said that students, especially girls, dropped out of school due to proper lack of proper sanitation -- read toilets or washrooms. A report last year in an English daily said that a girl student studying health science had to go to her college without drinking water so that she wouldn't have to go to the toilet which was said to be so dirty that one gets nauseated there. Even educational institutions, it seems, are not able to maintain proper sanitation facilities. The situation in government-run schools and colleges is said to be even more pathetic. A report last year said that as many as 59 percent of public and community schools did not have toilet facilities. The capital, it seems, is a mere reflection of the overall sanitation picture of the whole country.
Kathmandu Municipality, which must make certain that even the poorest resident of the city or a visitor has access to minimum toilet facilities, has to re-think its priorities and include hygiene and sanitation as one of its top priority areas and undertake to set up public toilets in different parts of the ever-expanding city. Finding a site to locate public sanitation facilities will no doubt be a problem, especially in the city proper. But questions need to be asked as to why the old public toilets no longer exist.
As young children, we used to use public toilets. There used to be two different public toilets in the locality where this columnist spent his childhood (as indeed his adulthood). But they no longer exit. Where have they gone? Did they vanish into thin air? There are no government or municipality offices on the sites where once stood the public toilets. There are now private houses on these sites. It would be illuminating if the government told the people just how these public toilets were given to individuals to construct private buildings. The authorities have to ensure that public toilets are not made to vanish into thin air because of political or other pressures or because of corruption.
Many might also recall that there was a public toilet just next to the New Road Gate, next to the Nepal Airlines headquarters. That toilet was closed for some time because of the state visit to this country by the then Maldivian president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the 1980s. The toilet has remained closed ever since, and has now become a part of the Nepal Airlines premises (how?). There was also a public toilet at the entrance to the Basantapur Durbar area. Where did it disappear? What is the use of spending people's tax money and setting up public toilets, if they are to vanish into thin air soon after their construction?
The vanishing toilets in the city could be another example of how the people's needs have been sidelined by the authorities. The campaign by the activists and non-governmental organisations with the slogan of one toilet for each household in the country may not be able to achieve its goal within the time specified; but it would more than fulfill its objective if the government and local authorities placed the necessary priority on public hygiene and sanitation. By so doing, the government and other agencies will be helping the people, including students, in an area that really matters.
Posted on: 2010-03-29 08:27
Headlines
Advertisements
