KARACHI, Oct 6: At a pay-and-use toilet at the Civil Hospital Karachi, 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 to help tackle crime. It has since taken on the task of providing Karachi’s citizenry with public toilets that work.
According to Ram, a little over a hundred people use this public toilet every day. Because the toilets in the wards are filthy, the users include patients and hospital staff.
Mohammed 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, the ward toilet is in a terrible state,” says Arshad, adding that he does not mind paying the Rs2 charged for the use of this clean convenience. They have been at the hospital for 15 days now.
However, the attitude of a driver employed by a doctor who works 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.” Yet he acknowledges that the pay-latrine remains dry and clean only because a small fee is charged.
Near the toilet, three men from a village in Sanghar have set up a makeshift abode. “We have been here for three days since our village chief is sick and may need blood,” they say. To cut expenses, the men use the pay-latrine only for ‘the big job’. “In any case, we find the toilets very claustrophobic and prefer open space,” says one of them. The others nod in agreement.
Need of the hour
While men squirt against walls or squat wherever convenient, it is the women who find pay latrines truly useful.
“The idea to build pay toilets came about after female shoppers in Saddar were found patronising two diagnostic labs there. For Rs10, they would use the lab toilet under the pretext of having come in for a urine test,” said Rehan Shaikh, in charge of the toilet project.
A peek at another CPLC toilet outside CHK’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 in improving people’s sanitation habits,” People appear to be unwilling to alter their habits, he says. “Using the convenience properly will only come with behavioural change, and that is possible only through education,” he comments.
“People often say that there are no toilets and hence they are forced to relieve themselves on the roadside, against walls or behind bushes and vacant plots. But where there is an attended toilet, they are not willing to pay and use it!” Faiz points out. “Refusing to pay or not using toilets properly is just one problem; they often vandalise the place,” he says. “Just to replace stolen faucets, the CPLC has to spend Rs3,000 every month.”
Jeevi Ama, who is somewhere in her 60s, has been a sweeper at the CHK for about 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 Jeevi, many relieve themselves outside the toilet pan. “At times they clog it with menstrual rags and I find food items like roti thrown in. They wash their clothes right where they relieve themselves.”
Government apathy
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, reportedly due to apathy on the part of the local government. “Not one new facility has come up in the three years since the new nazim took over,” explains Faiz. “We have been writing to him tirelessly, explaining our project, but there has been a complete lack of response.”
“We have donors who are ready to lend financial support for 200 toilets,” says Shaikh. “But we need the city government to be on board. Issues like land, water and electricity can only be resolved through official cooperation.”
Once such partnerships are in place, the construction of a toilet block takes less than a month and costs Rs250,000. The model, designed by architect Arshad Abdullah, is simple to reproduce.
Of the 31 units built, three have already been demolished in the latest developmental schemes. “If we had been given advance notice, we could have saved the units – taken them apart, mechano-like and re-installed them somewhere else,” says an irate Shaikh.—IPS
