THANKS to the United Nations and Singapore, we now have World Toilet Day on Nov 19 every year, a day dedicated to proper sanitation for all. It may seem funny, even a bit of a joke, to those of us fortunate to be living where there are clean and available public loos. But to the women of Mumbai, for example, where there are fewer than 3,000 municipal public toilets catering to 18 million residents, it’s a seriously pressing issue.
This is especially as every single one of those public loos is meant for men’s use only. For all that we complain about loos in Singapore, the city does have a decent system. There are loos wherever you can find food and drink, for example, a commonsensical arrangement which I had taken for granted until I went to Taiwan. After having enjoyed a hearty meal in a coffeeshop, I discovered to my leg-crossing horror that there were no toilets in the establishment or nearby.
Singapore may have set itself up for derision, even from its own sometimes unappreciative citizens, by pushing through World Toilet Day, but I applaud the move. Bringing better sanitation to all is, no matter how you look at it, a noble endeavour. While there is Japan with its high-tech self-washing, self-drying toilet systems, there are many parts of Asia where sanitation is so poor that the issue goes beyond public health. In villages across South Asia, for example, the lack of toilets has been associated with rapes and other attacks on women.
Many women are forced to venture into the edges of fields and lonely woods in search of privacy, and often at the crack of dawn or late in the evening, to optimise the cover of darkness.
And this opens them up to the risk of attack. - See more at: http://www.stasiareport.com/the-big...ruly-noble-idea-20130808#sthash.aK472qRi.dpuf
This is especially as every single one of those public loos is meant for men’s use only. For all that we complain about loos in Singapore, the city does have a decent system. There are loos wherever you can find food and drink, for example, a commonsensical arrangement which I had taken for granted until I went to Taiwan. After having enjoyed a hearty meal in a coffeeshop, I discovered to my leg-crossing horror that there were no toilets in the establishment or nearby.
Singapore may have set itself up for derision, even from its own sometimes unappreciative citizens, by pushing through World Toilet Day, but I applaud the move. Bringing better sanitation to all is, no matter how you look at it, a noble endeavour. While there is Japan with its high-tech self-washing, self-drying toilet systems, there are many parts of Asia where sanitation is so poor that the issue goes beyond public health. In villages across South Asia, for example, the lack of toilets has been associated with rapes and other attacks on women.
Many women are forced to venture into the edges of fields and lonely woods in search of privacy, and often at the crack of dawn or late in the evening, to optimise the cover of darkness.
And this opens them up to the risk of attack. - See more at: http://www.stasiareport.com/the-big...ruly-noble-idea-20130808#sthash.aK472qRi.dpuf
