Toilets of shame! (Part II)

 

By Solomon Mensah

Caution: The content of this article could be nauseating to the reader!

Fighting the stench

In Sunyani, I met a toilet attendant who doubles as the cleaner in one of the toilets I visited. For the sake of anonymity, I will call him Papa Asare. Bare handedly, he held a short broom in the right hand tightly like a relay baton. I gawked at him as he picked the half-worn-out baskets that had toilet papers in them one after the other and poured the contents into a bigger basket.

The 52 year old man stamps his right leg on the piled toilet papers to suppress it from falling from the basket. While I struggled to take a breath, he did the sweeping seemingly happily without a nose mask. “I would have wished wearing a nose mask and gloves to work but I have never been given any,” he told me.  

Papa Asare hints that cleaners use DDT and other chemicals to wash the toilet seats. “These chemicals kill the houseflies and other animals that are in the toilets,” he noted. However, “It is not all the time that the caretakers of the toilet supply us the DDT. Therefore, what we often use is just ordinary water.”

The flies, as I spoke with him, hovered all over. A user of any of the public toilets performs another function in addition to easing him/herself. “For the user of the public toilet, he or she has to fan away the houseflies incessantly,” he admitted.

Another toilet attendant, a woman, whom I will name as Ama Kwakyewaa, told me that “The Sunyani Municipal Assemblies’ Health Inspectorate Team occasionally comes to inspect the toilet. But the sad thing is that when they come, they stand meters away and write their report. It was on only one occasion that I saw them enter this toilet to inspect,” she said.

Mr. Simon Opoku, the Municipal Environmental Health Officer-Sunyani, however, debunks the assertion that his men do not enter the toilets during their inspections. “I enter the male section of the toilets but not that of the females’ since I am a male,” he said. On the provision of gloves, nose and mouth masks for the toilet cleaners, he admits that some of the private operators who partly manage these facilities with the assembly fail to resource their cleaners with such gears.

He said that the standard of the public toilets in the Sunyani Municipality is average and that they are not to perfection. Answering my question as to whether he will use these toilets himself, he gave a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ reply. “Yes, if the standard of the toilet is good and vice versa,” he observed. Attempt to reach the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to as well react to the standard of public toilets went futile.

Contracting diseases

Dr. Ohene Adu is a private medical doctor in Sunyani. He tells me there are a number of diseases that one is likely to contract from the public toilet. “Candidiasis (in women), urinary tract infection (in both men and women) and diarrhea are some of the diseases one could contract on an untidy toilet,” he said.

Considering the filthy nature of our public toilets, a user is prone to contracting any of such diseases.

Public toilet in the news

On Adom FM’s News (17^th August, 2013 and 19^th August, 2013 respectively), it was reported that at Aseseso (Akuapem South) in the Eastern Region, both men and women use the same column of a public toilet due to malfunction of the female section and at Amasaman in the Greater Accra Region, a public toilet overflowed. Just close to the Amasaman’s overflowing toilet, the report said, sat a school and food vendors.

The Foot Soldiers’ factor

The public toilets, unlike the days of old, are now jointly managed by the various assemblies together with private individuals. According to Mr. Simon Opoku, the assembly used to advertise to the general public for interested persons to sign a contract to run the facility with the assembly.

He, however, said that for the past two to three regimes (governments), the laid down procedure in getting private individuals for the joint management of the toilets has changed. “Now, foot soldiers will seize the toilet and give it to their own men to partner the assembly in the toilet’s management,” he noted.

Looking beyond the toilet seizures, no decent word can be used to describe any of the toilets the foot soldiers fight over. “With the present system of foot soldiers taking captive of the toilets, the assembly can only query them of the poor state of the toilets but rather cannot take the ‘ownership’ from them,” says Mr. Opoku.

Where does the money go?

Averagely, the public toilet user pays 20 pesewas to access the toilet. The following table analyzes the income such toilets owners receive. The table uses two hundred (200) users of a toilet to calculate its proceeds in a day, month and year. Assuming every user visits the toilet once in a day.

Unit cost	Day (1)	Week (7)	Month (30)	Year (12months)
0.20p	200x20	40x7	280x4wks	1120x12
Total	GHc40.00	GHc280.00	GHc1,120.00	GHc13,440.00

Proposed fiscal analysis of sanitary income of a toilet from its 200 people (users).

The million dollar question now to ask is where do these monies go???

Mr. Simon Opoku says the owners pay 40 to 60 Ghana Cedis to the assembly in a month. He is hopeful that with the Sunyani Municipal Assembly’s newly drafted policy to police the private ownership of public toilets and the effort of his office, cleanliness would be restored to such toilets. Until then, users of the public toilet like Derrick and Juliet will have to battle the filth and stench.

The Writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance Journalist and a Cultural Activist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

 

 

 

 

Toilets of shame! (Part I)

 

By Solomon Mensah

Caution: The content of this article could be nauseating to the reader!

Filth in Darkness 

The Sun seems breathing fire. From where it hangs in the sky to where the descendants of Adam tread on Earth, one wonders why its heat is so severe. Derrick Fosu, a 27 year old teacher, is seen with his forehead dotted with beads of sweat. He trudges out of a public place of convenience here at New Town, a suburb of Sunyani.

The toilet stands close to the Methodist Junior High School. Observing it from afar, it promises to have had a good architectural look of its frontal view. A dwarfish wall of pillars and mesh in shambles stand on the edges of both the male and female entrances of the toilet. The wall protrudes to form a square-like shape to enclose the forecourt. Upon entering the forecourt, a wooden structure (on the left) which has never ‘tasted’ paint sits like a bull frog in a swamp. In the tattered and tilted kiosk which could perfectly be described as a hen coop sits the toilet’s attendant, an old man. He munches some groundnuts.

“I bought my paper of which one cost 20 pesewas. Its size is a little bigger than a class one pupil’s A1 exercise book. Walking down the defaced concrete ‘red carpet’ pavement to enter the toilet, one is greeted by a very pungent smell like that of an expired egg,” Derrick says.

He says that he started wearing glasses (lens) far back in 2002, then a Junior High School student. “But even with my glasses on, I get lost into an impenetrable darkness whenever I enter this toilet.”

Boakyewaa Juliet, a 37 year old trader, will not pass by upon seeing me interview Derrick. She says when one enters the facility in question, the first half of a minute, one stands still like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s statue at the Independence Square due to the darkness in it.

Derrick says that on his first day of patronizing the facility, he had to draw back into the day’s light to switch on a ‘flashlight application’ he had on his phone. “This was just about 30 seconds after entering. Slowly lifting one leg after the other, I finally found what my eyes told me was a clean seat to squat on.

“Minutes later I realized that my feet sat in a pool of maggots. The maggots were as innumerable as one couldn’t imagine such that if you threw a grain of sand onto them, it would not find a way to fall onto the cemented floor,” he told me.

Derrick and Juliet’s concerns represent the sentiments shared by both the young and elderly who are the patrons of these public toilets. Boakyewaa tells me that aside the toilet, the only option for easing oneself is the ‘wrap and throw’ method. “You do it in a polythene bag and throw it away. But I feel guilty doing that so this toilet is my last resort.” 

The state of others

At Penkwasi- another suburb of Sunyani- the filth that adorns public toilets is not any different. Few meters away from the Highstreet JHS sits two toilets. By just filing pass one of them (KVIP), one stands the chance of being heartlessly ‘perfumed’ without paying a pesewa. This particular toilet has lately seen a little improvement. Visiting it this time, it has new aluminum roofing and seemingly whitewashed.

Martha Adjei who just got out of the toilet shared the ordeal patrons of the toilet go through. “One has to squint off the pots of urine and battle houseflies,” she said. Upon entering the toilet, pockets of urine that stand in holes in front of the squatting-seats send one squinting. At New Dormaa, Zongo, Area II, and Area III among many other suburbs of Sunyani, the state of our public toilets is the same.

AMA’s tomb in the Capital City 

I did not limit my search for a clean public toilet only to Sunyani. In the heart of Ghana’s capital city, Accra, is a toilet that I refer to as a tomb. It is situated some few meters from Maame Dorkono’s Obra Spot. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s (AMA) toilet at the 37-Labadi Lorry Station is given a good painting on its outer look. It has both urinal and toilet in one hall. I paid 20 pesewas to urinate.

In the toilet, one of three ceiling fans meticulously rotates to drive away the unbearable breeze. On the doors of the toilet’s cubicles is the inscription; “Please do not stand on the pot. Sit on it.” Such give the impression that the AMA, by the standard of this particular toilet, is poised to uplift the face of public toilets. However, this one, like the others, is bedeviled with uncleanliness.

The water closet and urine sink are turning brownish in colour. The former is in such a bad state that users of the facility hide in squatting on it instead of sitting; which the toilet attendants seriously abhor. The flashing system of the WC has as well collapsed. One has to fetch water from a tank placed outside the facility when flashing. The stench here, probably because of the chemical used in cleaning the toilet, is disgusting. “Its condition, if not for the pressing need to attend to nature’s call, I will never enter,” a user told me.    

On my tour of public toilets, I have come to one of the sanity-crippled toilets here at Labadi, a suburb of Accra. This toilet sits opposite to the Omanye Art Gallery, on the Labadi Beach road. I have bought my paper of which one cost 20 pesewas. Looking at the filthy nature of the water closet, most users buy two papers costing them 40 pesewas.

Adjetey, a user tells me, “We divide one of the papers into two so as to spread them on the edges (mouth) of the pot. I once vomited upon entering the toilet because of the nauseating scent.” He says that in the rainy season, maggots climb up to the mouth of the pots and it is very worrying.

At La Maami, close to the Fraga Oil at the lorry station, another toilet announces its presence by its stench. In front of this toilet, food vendors compete for space as they mount their stands to sell to their prospective consumers.

Watch this space for Part II soon.

The Writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance Journalist and a Cultural Activist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba