Lets talk toilets

Editorial: It is not as exciting and appealing as climate change, environment and of course, its sexy sister, water, this toilet.

They probably appear trivial and somewhere lower down on our list of priorities of listed developments.

How much emphasis we give toilets, which eventually boils down to sanitation, is evident from the state of it all in the country, from those in the urban centres to the rural ones.

Although the ways and facilities used in public toilets in urban areas might seem sophisticated by a villager’s standards, the ways in which they are maintained is perhaps poorer than those of the pit toilets in the villages.

One need not visit public toilets to ascertain that fact.

A visit to the toilet at a nearest office, perhaps this newspaper’s, and that point is established.  

No matter how fast-paced the country’s development process, it has slackened when it comes to feeling this ownership of public services and the same goes for office facilities. 

Different names with which toilets are known among the Bhutanese, to a large extent, also shows what treatment they deserve.

Often those at home are preferably called bathrooms that in itself exude some feeling of affinity and thus are well maintained.

Different hotels and resorts go with washrooms, restrooms or men’s and ladies rooms and these rooms are offered the kind of service and cleanliness befitting the names and the standards.

Call them what one may, but the condition of those of some offices, regular restaurants and public toilets is most deplorable.

Flushes are either broken or not working, some have no water or it is just a couple of toilets, in case of offices, for all of its employees. 

Pots left unflushed after defecation and doma-stained urinals is a common site in these toilets with too many people sharing them. 

But, they do not share the responsibility when it comes to maintaining the same toilets they have to return to.

In many villages still, people are forced to do their private business in fields or nearby waterways.

Water borne diseases like diarrohea and dysentery continue to spread and it continues to be one of the highest causes of morbidity in the country.

It also causes health costs to skyrocket.

Yet we prefer to remain oblivious or pretend to have no clue that there is a toilet crisis to deal with.

Perhaps, it is worth a thought today, on the World Toilet Day, while we defecate in morning, in the privacy of our clean-mopped tiled toilets, why we cannot feel the same way when we enter those of our offices and the public ones.