Sanitation facilities for female visitors are subpar in Amar Ekushey Book Fair’s Suhrawardy Udyan part, compared to the sanitation services available for men.
Nine urinals and six commodes have been installed for male visitors and officials of the fair. There are also two basins inside, and arrangement for ablution outside the toilet premises.
For women there are only three commodes, even though half the visitors and a number of sales executives at the book fair are women.
All the restrooms are in the eastern part of the fair adjacent to the place of prayer.
There are no directions posted to the male and female restrooms in the Suhrawardy Udyan premises of the fair, where most booklovers usually gather. Only a single arrow sign indicates the male restrooms as ‘toilet’.
The water supply was stopped in all the toilets for an hour at the start of the fair yesterday and a “paani nai” (no water) sign was hanging in front of the female washroom. The water supply resumed after 4pm.
Caretaker of the female toilets, Ashia Begum, said two of the three toilets for women were unusable due to water clogging.
Publisher of Pial Printing and Publications, Syeda Nazmun Nahar, told Dhaka Tribune: “The female washrooms were well organized most recently. The concerned authorities will definitely take necessary measures in this regard.”
The Member Secretary of the fair, also the Director of Sales and Reprint department, Dr Jalal Ahmed, said he would immediately look into the matter.
“We will also try to increase the number of restrooms,” Dr Jalal added.
On a different note, Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder came to the fair to unveil his niece Leena Majumder’s book of poems, ‘Bastobotar Berajale,’ at the book unveiling stage of the Udyan section.
Like every year, Switch Foundation, a voluntary organization, arranged wheelchairs from the TSC intersection for differently-abled people, as vehicular movement was barred from there towards Doyel Chattar.