India, Mumbai: man killed for taking too long in public toilet

Queuing for the Gents in Mumbai. Photo: Hindustan Times

A slum resident from Mahim in Mumbai ended up killing his neighbour whom he felt had taken too long in a public toilet. Locals feel the tragic death could have been avoided if only the civic authorities had provided sufficient public toilets.

“We have no sanitation facility. Sometimes, basic human needs take over all rationale. and that is what happened today. It’s a tragedy that two lives were destroyed over such a petty matter. The authorities must take note of this,” said a resident.

The unfortunate incident took place on Saturday evening, 28 January 2012, when Simon Lingeree went to a public toilet near Devaji Govind Chawl, the slum where he lived. With Lingeree apparently taking too long, Santosh Kargutkar (40), who was in the queue, started banging on the door and abused him

When Lingeree finally came out, the two got into a fight. Lingeree was knocked unconscious and rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead. A few hours later the police arrested Kargutkar and charged him with murder.

Source: Times of India, 30 Jan 2012

Philippines: an inspiring ‘toilet tale’

His childhood experience with ill-equipped schools in the provinces inspired businessman Napoleon Co to build toilets for poor Muslim and Christian kids in Mindanao.

Children visitors can now use the newly-completed restroom (inset) of the Kristiyano-Islam (KRIS) Peace Library instead of the bushes

Napoleon Co, owner of construction superstore chain Home Depot remembers the restrooms in his elementary school:

“Feces were splattered over the cracked tiles, and water barely spewed out of the broken faucets”.

Co admitted to holding the call of nature until he got home as a child— an unfortunate habit he found hard to break while studying in provincial schools in Cebu.

“Tending to withhold bowel movement for years as a child, I was 14 years old when I started seeing pools of blood whenever I used the toilet. Until I was about 35, the hemorrhage did not stop,” he laments.

He vowed never to let his children experience the same thing.

India, New Delhi: using Facebook and SMS to keep the city clean

With this photo on Facebook local resident Akshay Arora asks the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to "kindly send some one and get it clean this Toilet/Urinal". One day later on 7 April 2011, MCD replied: "Your complaint reference no. is 02/0704/SP"

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) launched its Facebook page in January 2011 and an integrated SMS service in March 2011 to enable public monitoring of garbage collection sites and public urinals/toilets in areas under its jurisdiction.The first experiences were positive as illustrated by the example of 22-year-old Piyush Goyal posted his complaint of garbage spilling over from the dump in his area.

On January 8, he clicked pictures of the seven dirty ones in South Delhi’s R K Puram area and posted them on Facebook. And the next day, he says, he saw the pictures of clean dhalaos uploaded by the MCD.

“There is lot of transparency through this way. The man who actually cleans it asked me why I uploaded the pictures. So the information is going from top to the bottom,” says Goyal.

MCD additional commissioner (engineering) Anshu Prakash added:

“This system is increasing transparency, fixing accountability and putting everything under public scrutiny. And none of us like to be ashamed in public. So people have started working at the bottom”.

Nepal, Chitwan: a toilet revolution

Take a Pee & Get One Rupee. If you have traveled on the Prithvi Highway last year, you must have noticed this seemingly-ridiculous slogan in Darechowk, near Kurintar. Of course, if you have used public toilets before, then you may be more used to paying a rupee to urinate. Instead, members of The Sewa Nepal, a local NGO, pay anyone a rupee if he or she uses their toilet. And no, they are not joking.

Indonesia: ADB extends US$ 35 million for sanitation improvement in Medan and Yogyakarta

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is extending a US$ 35 million loan to help Indonesia rehabilitate and expand sanitation facilities in the cities of Medan and Yogyakarta.

Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province, and Yogyakarta, the capital of Yogyakarta province, have a combined population of around 4.5 million people.

The loan will be used to build around 280 communal sanitation facilities in poor areas in the two cities, as well as two wastewater treatment systems for low-cost housing development projects in Medan. Sewerage systems will be rehabilitated and expanded with up to 28,000 additional household connections. The Metropolitan Sanitation Management and Health Project will also provide support to mobilize community involvement in the planning, operation and maintenance of communal facilities, and will ensure women are strongly involved in the process.

India, Pune: train turns into public toilet at railway station

Vendors and beggars living near Pune station are using the toilets on a waiting express train rather the pay-per-use public toilets. The agency responsible for keeping the tracks clean says there isn’t enough time or water to remove the mess on time. Railway passengers are complaining about the stink.

As soon as the Pune-Mumbai-Sinhagad Express leaves Pune station at 6.05 am, the stink from grime lining the tracks at Pune railway station becomes unbearable. This is because, over the years, the train leaving for Mumbai from Pune has become a public toilet not for the daily passengers, but for all those who spend nights in and around Pune station.

No sooner the train arrives at the platform from the yard, there is a scramble among autorickshaw drivers, vendors, street children, beggars, hotel workers, to get inside the train to use the toilets. The train remains at the station for nearly half-an-hour by that time it is filled with Mumbai passengers as well. Since this facility comes for free, they do not want to use the public toilet made available at the station premises, according to railway officials.

According to railway officials, the stink and squalor at the Pune station begins early morning. The situation becomes worse as number of trains leave Pune station soon after the Sinhagad Express departs. While station manager CD Pounikar has been blaming the SMS Ltd, the agency which has been tasked to keep tracks clean, the agency officials argue the time between two trains arriving and leaving Pune station is too short to carry out immediate cleanup. They also point out that sufficient water is not available.

However, regular passengers and activists point out that the platform used by the express train is supposed to be kept clean by the railway staff and not the contractors.

Harsha Shah, president, Railway Pravasi Group [said] the Central Railways should implement the track system like the one at Kolkata railway station. “The Kolkata railway station has concrete surface on the tracks which make cleaning job easier. No sooner the trains leave, the staff immediately clean up the concrete surface”.

In 2001 the situation was even worse according to a Times of India article. Female commuters had to wade “through a pile of human excreta” to catch the Singhabad Express. Slums dwellers were using the platform for open defecation.

Source: Manoj More, Indian Express, 29 Jun 2010

Afghanistan, Kabul: toilet tribulations

For Kabul’s estimated population of 4-5 million there are only 35 public toilets, according to the municipal authorities.

“We need at least 65 extra public latrines in Kabul immediately,” Nesar Ahmad Habibi, head of Kabul’s waste management authority, told IRIN, adding that the lack of government action and limited resources had prevented the construction of sufficient public toilets in the city.

“We have even sent proposals to the president’s office but to no avail,” he said.

Many people are forced to defecate and urinate in the open: “It’s not that we don’t want to use a latrine, it’s because there is no latrine,” said Arifullah, a local man.

“If you have a pain in your stomach and there is no toilet how long can you wait?” asked another man.

Only five of the 35 public toilets have facilities for the disabled – well below what is needed given the large number of disabled people resulting from three decades of turmoil.

People who use the latrines have to pay a small fee to cover maintenance and cleaning – 5-10 Afghanis [10-20 US cents], a sum that the large number of extremely poor people in the city would prefer to avoid paying.

A rapidly growing population, lack of modern sewage systems, significant waste management problems and the lack of public toilets in Kabul are causing environmental and health risks, according to experts.

No soap

“I don’t use the latrines because they are extremely dirty,” said Abdul Jamil, a young man. “There is also no soap to wash your hands.”

None of Kabul’s public toilets provide soap or hand-drying facilities.

Whilst hand-washing is crucial for disease prevention, soap is also not available in toilets in most Kabul schools, officials in the Ministry of Education said.

“Inappropriate latrines, open defecation and poor waste management cause serious diseases and damage the environment,” Hassan al-Sayed, country director of the French NGO Solidarités, told IRIN.

Waste management

In September 2008 Kabul Municipality said that up to 90 percent of the 3,000 tons of solid waste produced in the capital every day was managed and dealt with.

However, officials say waste management capacities have deteriorated sharply in the past year: “Now we collect only about 50 percent of the solid waste produced in Kabul on a daily basis,” said Habibi, citing dwindling resources, staff reductions and broken-down trucks as major problems.

“For waste management in Kabul we need 17,500 staff but we have only 3,000; and we need 2,500 trucks but we only have 119.”

Rapid population growth and unregulated housing developments have created serious social and environmental challenges in Kabul, according to government officials.

Al-Sayed, whose organization has been helping households in Kabul to build hygienic latrines, emphasized the importance of public awareness about sanitation and hygiene.

“What if there are hundreds of safe latrines but people don’t use them,” he said, adding that people should know the risks of open defecation and unsafe latrines.

Only 12 percent of Afghans have access to improved sanitation and less than 25 percent have access to safe drinking water, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Most Afghans use the traditional dry vault toilet systems which were ranked the worst toilets in the world by WaterAid’s State of the World’s Toilets 2007 report.

Source: IRIN, 16 Nov 2009

India: stinking data, 600mn Indians have no toilets!

No one would ever call Radha Jagarya fortunate. The 45-year-old widow and her four children live on the pavement in an upmarket south Mumbai suburb, scraping a living by selling flowers to passing motorists.

But in terms of public toilet provision, the family is well-served compared with other areas, with an adequate communal block a five-minute walk away near the US Consulate and another under a busy road in the opposite direction.

In slum areas, where more than half of Mumbai lives, an average 81 people share a single toilet. In some places it rises to an eye-watering 273. Even the lowest average is still 58, according to local municipal authority figures.

Unsurprisingly, it is still common to see people squatting by roads and railway tracks or along the coast, openly defecating in the city that drives India’s economy and where some of the world’s richest people live.

The UN estimates that 600mn people or 55% of Indians still defecate outside, more than 60 years after the scrupulously clean independence leader Mahatma Gandhi first talked of the responsible disposal of human waste.

Jack Sim takes a very keen interest in such matters. As the founder and president of the World Toilet Organisation (WTO), he has made it his mission to improve sanitation across the globe.

For him, India has “a lot of work to do” to improve sanitation, not just because of its impact on health and the spread of diseases such as diarrhoea, which Unicef says kills 1,000 Indian children aged under five every day.

It also tarnishes the image of a country that likes to portray itself as an emerging world economic superpower, the Singapore businessman said on a visit to Mumbai, where he was promoting World Toilet Day on November 19.

In particular, Sim questioned whether the authorities in New Delhi were doing enough to provide adequate public toilet facilities for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, which will draw tens of thousands of foreign visitors.

“If you don’t have good toilets to welcome tourists, they don’t come and won’t go to all your beautiful sites,” he said.

Public toilet provision in Mumbai – and other cities – faces the same problem affecting housing, water and other basic services: supply cannot keep up with demand as India’s population explodes.

In March 2009, Mumbai’s municipal authorities said there were 77,526 toilets in slum areas and 64,157 more were needed. Work is in progress on only 6,050.

Yet the UN’s Mumbai Human Development Report 2009, published earlier this month, points out that even where public toilets exist, most have no running water, drainage or electricity, making them unhygienic and unusable.

Embarrassment means women and girls often wait all day until it is dark to go to the toilet, increasing their chances of infections and exposing them to violence or even snake bites as they seek out remote places.

Poor sanitation and the illnesses it causes cost the Indian economy Rs12bn ($255mn) a year, according to the health ministry.

Sim, who sees links between public lavatories and social development, wants the issue pushed up the political agenda, urging people to “talk more about toilets.”

“People go to the toilet more often than they have sex,” he said. “Everybody has to go.

“It needs to be a very nice experience. It needs to be safe, it needs to be hygienic, it must not cause problems to your health and we need to feel emotionally engaged with the toilet.”

Private sector involvement could help cut the number of people in India and other developing countries who have no sanitation – estimated at 2.6bn – while more schemes are needed to make open defecation socially unacceptable, he said.

In the northern state of Haryana, a successful “No Toilet, No Wife” campaign has been running, urging women to turn down suitors if they cannot provide them a house with a lavatory.

“Every problem is a business,” said Sim, adding there would be a benefit for the entire city and the country’s economy if every slum-dweller had access to proper sanitation.

“People who are healthy are able to produce more, they get out of poverty, they get into the middle class, they move up and consume more,” he said.

“Business is, I think, the fastest and the cheapest way… The private sector will come up with innovations. Let them compete to serve the poor.”

Source: AFP/Mumbai / Gulf Times, 27 Nov 2009

India, New Delhi: Municipal Corporation to build waterless urinals

To tackle the problem of stench emanating from public conveniences in the Capital, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has decided to upgrade 1,000 of them into waterless urinals in view of the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

According to the civic agency, these urinals will come up at important Games venue stretches and would be ready by June 2010. At present two such waterless urinals are installed near Town Hall and ISBT.

The MCD expects to earn Rs.5 crore (US$ 1 million) per year after leasing out these urinals for five years. While the civic agency’s engineering department will construct the urinals, maintenance and operation will be handed over to a company that will be given advertisement rights.

A senior MCD official said: “The heart of the system is the cartridge which is fitted in the ceramic bowl and filled with biodegradable sealant that acts as a barrier. Due to absence of water and contact with air, urine does not form any gas and the toilet remains odour-free and reduces the burden on the sewage system.”

There are 4,000 urinals in the city that suffer from non-maintenance, according to the MCD.

Earlier in July 2009, the Times of India, reported that MCD was studing the feasibility of producing power from urine released from its waterless urinals. Engineers from the SidKar Technologies claimed they could generate 1 KW of power from one litre of urine, through a bacterial process that converts urine into hydrogen gas and water.

Source: The Hindu, 16 Oct 2009

Nepal, Kathmandu: public toilets – few and fetid

Shital Rai, a Bachelors’ Level student, was walking near the Old Bus Park beside Tundikhel when she had to answer the nature’s call. But when she reached the sole public toilet near the City Market inside the bus park premises, she nearly suffocated on the fetid smell. Her only option was to enter a restaurant where she had to pay Rs. 30 for a cup of coffee – and a chance to relieve herself.

“The caretakers charge Rs. 3 per person, but they hardly ever clean the toilet and its surroundings. Are the concerned authorities sleeping?” asks Rai. There are 36 public restrooms to cater to Kathmandu district’s over 2.5 million-strong population. A recent study by Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) shows that 45-140 males and 12-30 females use a public latrine in a day. But 18 percent of these latrines have no water supply, 65 percent have no hand-washing facility, while 10 percent are cleaned just once a day. Most of them have no proper ventilation and lack special provisions for the disabled and children.

These restrooms are managed both privately and by the municipality. But no one monitors these toilets. Ram Gurung, caretaker of a toilet under Sky Bridge near Sundhara said, “We have been facing water shortage and pipe blockage since three months. But no one has come to attend to the problems.” Blaming the public, Gurung complained of breakage and stealing of metal taps, random spitting, vulgar pictures and rough language on the walls.

Rabin Shrestha, Chief of Environmental Management Department at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) accepts negligence in monitoring public toilets for which he blames the country’s defunct political system. Shrestha said the City Service Center (CSC) programme had helped most of the toilets improve their hygiene standards. Three toilets have been constructed, one each at Chabahil, Bhotahiti and Khulla Manch. With the CSC programme, public toilets have seen lots of improvements including addition of bathing. But more needs to be done.

Source: Jenee Rai, Kathmandu Post / NGO Forum, 10 Sep 2009