Daily Times

The Salman Sufi Foundation (SSF) has launched its new project to resolve the issue of abysmal public toilets through establishment of its pilot Portable Toilets project, dated January 30th, 2020. The project is primarily targeted to benefit pedestrians especially women who do not have access to clean or safe public toilets in Pakistan. This is in line with the foundation’s plan of initiating an overall health and sanitation campaign made exclusively for women. In Pakistan there is a huge sanitation crisis when it comes to women; public hygiene in Pakistan ignores menstrual hygiene and emergency requirements for women. In order to provide better facilities, the Salman Sufi Foundation has decided to step in through its innovative solution of establishing portable public toilets which will in the first phase be launched in Lahore and Karachi.

Pakistan has faced a growing issue of inaccessibility to clean water, health and sanitation as we fail to provide the growing population’s needs. Furthermore, according to World Health Organization (WHO) we are the third largest country where over 43 million people practice defecation publicly.

According to World Bank’s report only 48% of the population of Pakistan has access to improved sanitation. It is also the 6th Sustainable Development Goal to target the issue of health and sanitation. Just the city of Lahore is home to millions of people and has only 21 public bathrooms.

The current state of our public sanitation is deplorable as most of these public toilets are in a state of chronic decay. Lack of proper sanitation facilities causes constipation, stool withholding behaviours in growing children, stunting which results to chronic malnutrition and contamination of clean water.

The Salman Sufi Foundation is collaborating with corporate companies such as Packages Limited, Reckitt Benckiser (Pakistan) Ltd., and Sufi Group of Industries to install portable toilets and cabins across all major cities in Pakistan especially in areas which have a huge number of women and pedestrian footfall.

The launch of the Foundation’s pilot project will entail installation of portable toilets in Lahore and Karachi by the end of February 2020. Lahore Development Authority in Punjab, Commissioner’s Office in Karachi as well as the Sindh Government have shown a keen interest in facilitation of these portable public toilets. These toilets will not only be user friendly with regards to elderly citizens and individuals with disabilities but will also be maintained on a daily basis through the Foundation’s Coordinating Officers. The toilets will have a constant supply of hand sanitizers, clean toilets as well as water for the facilitation of the public. This is a stepping-stone towards future projects on larger scales where we are open to collaborating with international organizations to carry out successful variations of our pilot project in areas where innovative quick solutions for safe sanitation are desperately needed.