By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, June 26: Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) in its policy and programme for the fiscal year 2020-21 has included a plan to increase people’s access to public toilets.
KMC said it would work in collaboration with restaurants, shopping malls, petrol pumps, hospitals and public institutions for allowing people to use their toilets.
To resolve the deficiency of public toilets in the Kathmandu Valley, directory of public toilet construction, operation and management will be implemented, it said.
The existing public toilets will be repaired and maintained and even upgraded.
According to the policy and programme of the metropolis, at least two new toilets will be built in each ward through the ward office in collaboration with the private sector next fiscal year.
A study conducted a few months ago to ascertain the status of public toilets in four municipalities of the Kathmandu Valley -- Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), Laliptur Metropolitan City (LMC), Kirtipur Municipality (KM) and Madhyapur Thimi Municipality (MTM) -- had shown that the petrol pump toilets could be an alternative to the acute shortage of public toilets.
The study conducted by Guthi showed that there are 56 petrol pumps are in KMC, 18 in LMC, two in Kirtipur and eight in Madhyapur.
Likewise, there are 37 public toilets in KMC, nine in LMC, 10 in Kirtipur and six in Madhyapur.
The number of toilets in the government buildings with people’s access to them stands at 15, whereas parks have five toilets, commercial buildings have 17 and hospitals have nine such toilets in Kathmandu.
Likewise, there are 10 public toilets, five toilets are at religious places, eight in government buildings, two at parks, five at commercial buildings seven at hospitals and 17 at petrol pumps in the LMC.
In Kirtipur Municipality, there are 20 toilets - 10 public toilets, two at religious places, two at government buildings, one each at a park and commercial building and two in hospitals.
Prakash Amatya, technical adviser to Guthi, said that during the study it was found that most of the public toilets in the four municipalities were in a sorry state.
All the public toilets scored very low in terms of gender friendliness, menstrual hygiene management, and disabled friendliness and meeting the requirements for operation and comfort, he said.