The Punjab government had initiated the toilets program after the issues of such facilities were highlighted on different forums.
The CM also constituted committee Khwaja Hassan Ahmad as a convener to finalize the project after duly consulting the C&W and P&D departments.
As per the official documents the administrative approval of the scheme was given on September 2017 while technical sanction was accorded by the chief engineer Buildings C&W department.
The documents further say that physical progress on the construction of the toilets was 50% while the gestation period of the scheme is four months.
The areas where toilets are being constructed in Lahore include Kareem Block Market Allama Iqbal Town, Bara Dari Ground near Mian Meer Darbar, Lorry addah, vegetable market, Raiwind, Dayal Pul, Fateh Garh Pul, Nadra office.
Initially, there is 60 toilets project in Lahore, said the Lahore Division Commissioner Abdullah Sumbal. He said that the toilets are specially designed, user-friendly, separate for male and female and for special people.
Sumbal further said that all European type of facilities also available at the five-star hotels will be available in the toilets like hand drier, sui-gas geysers etc.
Responding a query on financial cost, Sumbal said, the total amount of Rs 50 million will be spent. Talking about the maintenance and cleaners, he told, it would be outsourced. Citing reason for this, he said, the public money is wasted when projects are not carefully looked after.The issues of construction and their maintenance are equally important to the government was considering outsourcing it, he asserted.
He also said that after completion of the under construction toilets in the busy areas of the provincial metropolis, the number of such facilities would be increased in the entire division and then the province. He said that the Sargodha division Commissioner was also working on such facilities.
Usama Ahmad Ali, a regular visitor or the Shah Alam market said that he is a frequent visitor to the shopping centre. He said that there was a dire need for the public toilets in the market.
He said that he was a diabetic patient he had to respond to the call of nature many times in a day. In the past years, he used to visit the nearby mosques to use the washrooms but after the security issues the doors are locked now and this facility was available only during the prayer timings.
He said that the government should ensure availability of the restrooms in the newly built commercial plazas. Not only the city administration but the local governments too failed to resolve this facility, Usama complained.
Qudrat Bibi, a vendor at Islampura Sunday Bazar, said that the female vendors have to face the lack of toilets issue more severely. “The women vendors who sell different vegetables in the bazaars have become patients for not urinating for hours” she complained. The government should arrange separate washrooms for them, she demanded.
A former LDA DG on anonymity told that in past public facilities like the availability of public restrooms was not the priority.
He said that despite the fact that there were strict construction bylaws but lack of will of the authority and its involvement in other non-issues was leading to this crisis.
He appreciated the government initiative to construct state of the art toilets and urged to increase their numbers in the congested markets and other areas. The government should direct all the petrol and CNG pumps to provide the facility to all people, he held.
Women in the village have long been forced to hide their bodily functions from the conservative, deeply patriarchal society, Siddiqua and other female residents told AFP.
Restraining themselves over long days working in the fields, they wait for night and the cover of darkness – braving snakes, dogs, or even unpleasant encounters with strange men, Siddiqua’s daughter-in-law Tahira Bibi said, her face hidden by a brown veil.
“I would limit my consumption of water and eat less just to avoid going to the bathroom in the daytime,” the 35-year-old said, describing a ploy used by all the women interviewed by AFP in the region.
For the last month and a half, however, Tahira Bibi has not had to wait. A small red-brick cottage housing a pastel green squat toilet has been erected in front of her house.
The initiative has come from a Pakistani non-profit, the Lodhran Pilot Project (LPP), whose team has ventured into the remote hamlet to preach hygiene – mainly, they say, to men.
Providing toilets is the responsibility of men in the region, according to Altaf Hussain, a programme officer for LPP.
“When we ask them, they are ashamed that their women have to defecate outside,” he said.
“So they tell us they have never thought about toilets. They are surely lying. They can spend money on TV, smoking, other things, but latrines are not a priority.”
Added to this, he says, is a cultural issue: “People see open defecation as routine, and as fertilisers for their soil. They are not aware of the consequences.”
The United Nations children’s agency says 22 million Pakistanis relieve themselves in the open. In rural areas just 48 per cent of the population has access to toilets, compared with 72 per cent in the cities.
Some 53,000 children die each year from diarrhoea in Pakistan after consuming polluted water, according to UN data.
Typhoid, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis are common. Those who do not die “tend to see the reduced capacity of their body to absorb nutrients”, says Kitka Goyol, a UNICEF expert on water and hygiene.
That can be a factor in stunting, which afflicts 44 per cent of Pakistani children.
Tahira Bibi says one of her four children died after “stomach problems”, while another was at one point in critical condition.
“We thought it was God’s will,” she said soberly. The UN, which marked World Toilet Day this week, says the lack of toilets costs Pakistan up to $2.5 billion per year.
Khan, who came to power in August, vowed last month to “eradicate the deficit of toilets in the country by 2023”.
His counterpart in neighbouring rival India, Narendra Modi, launched his own aggressive sanitation drive in 2014.
New Delhi claims it has slashed the number of people forced to defecate in the open from 550 million that year to less than 150 million today.
Khan’s government, meanwhile, has launched “Clean Green Pakistan”, a massive social and environmental initiative seeking to shift behaviour in areas including sanitation, minister of climate change Malik Amin Aslam said. He did not offer details, however.
Non-profits such as LPP, which is not part of Clean Green Pakistan, are already paving the way in places like Basti Ameerwala, where 15 out of 60 households now have latrines.
In the neighbouring hamlet of Chah Jamalianwala, where LPP also works, 35 out of 60 houses have one, six of which have been built in recent weeks.
Mohammad Nasir, a frail man of 45, is one of the last to have taken the step.
Like many other men in the area, he did not consider a toilet a priority – having relieved himself in neighbouring fields for 28 years, and spending his money instead on a satellite dish, television and solar panel.
Finally, after his doctor warned him about his wife’s health, his small field is equipped with roofless latrines.
The construction cost him 15,000 rupees, a month’s salary – but, he says, he feels ‘pride’ at finally having a toilet.
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