Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Oct 3 2007 (IPS) – At a pay-and-use toilet at Karachi s Civil Hospital, Rustom Ali asserts: I m an employee here so why should I pay? Hari Ram, the 60-year-old caretaker, is too meek to argue and lets Ali in. Very few people pay, Ram mutters.
The four-unit squat latrine, two each for men and women, was constructed in 2003 near the hospital s outpatient department by the Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), an organisation originally formed in this southern port city to help tackle crime. It has since taken on the task of providing Karachi #39s citizenry with public toilets that work.
A little over a hundred people use this public toilet on a given day, according to Ram. Because the toilets in the wards are filthy the users include patients and hospital staff as well.
Mohammad Arshad is forced to bring his sick wife all the way from the second floor of the gynaecological ward, a good ten minutes walk, to this pay toilet. I don t blame her, it s in a terrible state, says Arshad, adding that he does not mind paying the two rupees (0.032 US dollar) for using this clean convenience. They have been at the hospital for 15 days now.
But the attitude of the driver of a doctor working at the hospital is typical. It s a government-run hospital, so it should be free, he asserts. There are latrines inside the hospital but they are filthy. He however acknowledges that the pay-latrine is dry and clean only because a small fee is charged.
Near the toilet, three men from a village in Sanghar, a district some 250 km from this port city, have set up a makeshift abode. We have been here for three days as our village chief is sick and he may need blood. The men use the pay-latrine only for the big job to cut expenses. In any case we find the toilets very claustrophobic and prefer the open space any time, says one of them. Others nod in agreement.
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While men squirt against walls or squat wherever convenient, it is the women who find the pay latrines truly useful.
The idea of building pay toilets began after female shoppers in Saddar, the oldest shopping area of Karachi, were found patronising two diagnostic labs there. For a sum of Rs 10 (0.16 dollar), they would use the lab toilet on the pretext that they had come in to get their urine tested, said Rehan Shaikh, who is in charge of the toilet project.
A peek at another CPLC toilet outside the civil hospital s emergency gate, near a big garbage dump, reveals a squeaky-clean, dry and stink-free facility. Its steel gates reveal another undesirable tendency vandalism.
Riaz Masih, the caretaker, explains that the gates were installed after the motor that pumps water to the flush tank vanished.
Seven years into the toilet project, Imran Faiz, does not see much headway made in improving people s sanitation habits . People seem unready, he said. Using the convenience properly will only come with behaviour change, and that is possible only through education, he sums up.
People often say there are no toilets and hence they are forced to relieve themselves on roadsides, against the wall or behind bushes and vacant plots. But where there is an attended toilet, they are not willing to pay and use it!
Faiz laments the complete unconcern towards such facilities. Refusal to pay or not using toilets properly is just one problem; often they vandalise the place.
Just to replace stolen faucets, the CPLC has to spend Rs 3,000 (50 dollars) every month, he grimaces.
Jeevi Ama, somewhere in her 60s, has been a sweeper at the civil hospital for some two decades. After a round of cleaning toilets in the women s ward she says: I often wonder where these women (patients) come from. They just don t know how to use the toilets. Many are from villages and have never seen or used these things before.
According to Ama, many relieve themselves outside the toilet pan. At times they clog it with menstrual rags; I find food items like roti (unleavened bread), thrown there. They wash their clothes right where they relieve themselves such an uncivilised lot. Other inmates of the women s ward do not bother with the toilets and relieve themselves against a wall, at night.
The CPLC began constructing public toilets in 2000 in partnership with the city government after a 1999 survey showed a gross lack of facilities. There were only 38 toilets and not all were in working condition. Others had become hideouts for drug addicts or shelters for the homeless.
Since 2000, however, only 31 new ones have been built revealing gross apathy on the part of the local government. Not one new facility has come up in the three years since the new nazim (mayor) took over. We have been tirelessly writing to him explaining our project but there has been a complete lack of response, explains Faiz.
We have donors who are ready to lend financial support for 200 such toilets, says Shaikh. But we need the city government to be on board as well. Issues like land, water and electricity can only be resolved through their cooperation.
