While commuting in Dhaka, many of us have felt the urge to use a restroom. In such situations, we are sometimes able to use a restroom in nearby restaurants and shopping malls, but most of the time we become helpless and have to wait it out, as the city severely lacks public toilets.
Public toilets are as critical a part of urban infrastructure as anything else to make cities liveable -- it is an integral civic amenity.
However, to cater to the more than 10 million people in Dhaka, according to an investigative report published by The Daily Star in 2011, there are only 67 public toilets in the city.
To make matters worse, most of these toilets are unclean and unhygienic. They lack proper lighting facilities or a regular supply of water and other sanitation materials such as soap, warm water, and toilet paper. The lack of public toilets is forcing city-dwellers to hold it in for long periods of time, and is also discouraging them from drinking water.
Both in the short and long term, this may cause serious health problems. Furthermore, due to the lack of public toilets, people also tend to answer nature’s calls in open areas, thereby polluting the environment and spreading diseases.
Besides the lack of sufficient public toilets, another problem in Dhaka is that, on a daily basis, many areas of the city suffer from the lack of an uninterrupted supply of electricity.
This is deteriorating the quality of life for the people living and working in those areas, as well as reducing their productivity, which is in turn, hurting the economy.
In our country, the energy for electricity is mainly produced through non-renewable energy sources such as petroleum and coal, which are harmful for the environment. In addition, the country has to spend a significant amount of its financial resources to import petroleum.
Considering the environment and energy security, many countries around the world are now shifting to renewable and clean energy sources such as bio-gas produced from human-waste, cattle manure, and other animal waste. For example, at the Bugesera prison and in 10 other correctional facilities in Rwanda, the inmates’ human waste is used to produce bio-gas, which is used as the source of energy in the prisons.
As in Rwanda, our country should also strive to increase the production of electricity through renewable and clean energy sources, as it may help mitigate our energy crisis.
To make Dhaka liveable, it is important to address the lack of public toilets and an uninterrupted supply of electricity.
By regularly cleaning and maintaining the existing public toilets and by setting up new, hygienic, and adequate public toilets across the city, the first issue can be resolved, while the latter issue can be solved, to some extent, in a sustainable and environment-friendly manner by setting up bio-gas plants that produce electricity from the waste generated in these very toilets.