The sound of splashing water is an odd thing in the middle of the night. After all, who bathes at midnight?
The young women of Match Colony do. When they are menstruating, they must. Because until recently, the only refuge they had from the prying eyes of others was the darkness of the night.
Sixteen-year-old Sheuly Akhter often bathes in the middle of the night, especially when she is menstruating. Her mother, Aklima Begum, stands guard at the door to ensure that insidious threats cannot encroach on her bathing.
Almost all the girls and women living in Narayanganj’s Match Colony have similar tales of the extraordinary measures they have had to take to use the public washrooms in the locality. Using the baths in the daytime often guarantees leers, jeers, and other harassment from men, which prevents so many women from using the washrooms.
Dhaka TribuneAklima Begum, 45, told Dhaka Tribune: “I am old, but my teenage girl does not want to take a bath every day because she feels embarrassed. I force her to take baths in the middle of the night when she is menstruating.”
Sumiya, another teenager, said: “We always have to be alert because there are no safe bathing spaces. When I take a bath at night, I often fear that someone will suddenly grab my leg. Such an unfortunate incident happened once. Our mothers do not let anyone know about these incidents as they think the family will lose dignity.”
On a recent visit to the area, this correspondent found that many of the washrooms, located in narrow alleyways, had broken doors. Some of the doors were barely hanging on to their hinges.
Dhaka TribuneBorsha Akhter, 16, goes to college each day but says she is often late as she has to queue for a long time each morning to wash even though her nearest bathing space is just two minutes from her home.
“I remember once feeling very uncomfortable, red water dripping down my legs while I was taking a bath. The boys in the area were standing next to me and making bad comments and laughing perversely,” she said.
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“Such incidents are a daily occurrence here. There is no safe, private bathing space for girls and it has become normal for men to see us. Due to the lack of security, girls are getting married at the age of 14 or 15,” the teenager added.
In addition to the broken doors, inadequate street lighting also hampers security in the washrooms. Furthermore, the washrooms are filthy and improper drainage often leads to dirty water seeping into nearby houses.
Most of the people living in the area are industrial workers.
Dhaka TribuneA hope
A Unicef report found that Dhaka has more than 5,000 slums inhabited by an estimated four million people, about 22% of whom are adolescents. Due to a lack of separate bathrooms, many women have to face various forms of violence and harassment while bathing in open spaces.
Against this background, Plan International is working to repair the damaged bathing facilities in Dhaka’s slum areas, and working on new washing spaces solely for use by adolescent girls and young women to ensure they have safe access to water and sanitation facilities.
Manik Kumar Saha, project manager of Plan International Bangladesh, said: “We learned about this problem from teenagers, and we started working to change this situation. Under the Empowering Girls for Economic Opportunity in Safe Space (E-GLOSS) project, we are constructing more than 15 bathrooms in low-income areas in the south of Dhaka, such as City Palli, Match Colony, Dhalpur and Khilgaon, by June 2022. Two have been constructed in Match Colony, and they will be usable by the end of June.”