Bangladesh has ordered an emergency deployment of 100 mobile toilets
in its capital to head off a worrying rise in public defecation,
Dhaka's Mayor said on 26 January. Sadeque Hossain Khoka told AFP
the sprawling metropolis, which has an official population of 12
million, has only 48 public toilets - one for every quarter of a
million residents. This cannot meet demand, he said, leading to
a pile up of the kind of stools it would be inadvisable to sit on
in parks and by roadsides."We have launched 100 mobile toilets,
which will be carried around manually on tricycle vans. They will
be strategically placed so that people don't have to use road corners
to answer the call of nature," he said.
Unofficially, Dhaka's population tops 20 million, when vast slums
on the city's outskirts are included. The tin-sided mobile toilets
are plastered with colourful advertisements including quotes from
a famous Bangla poem which tells people: "Let's do good work, no
matter where you were born." They also carry posters urging people
not to treat streets and open spaces as public toilets.
The mobile toilets will charge five taka for people to defecate
and two taka to urinate, and are now available for 12 hours a day
- between 8am and 8pm.
Khoka said the authorities would introduce more mobile toilets if
the venture becomes a success.
Mobile toilets hit Dhaka's streets
