Public toilet is something we do not like to talk about in our daily life. But, it certainly matters to everybody. Could you think about a day when you won’t go out of your home or work station and don’t need to use a toilet? You hardly could. Unfortunately the importance of public toilet has remained low-profiled until now in our policies and programmes. As a consequence, urination and defecation in open places have become a common scenario in big cities and towns of the country. When we are much aware about the sanitation situation in the rural areas of the country, we remain silent about the necessity of appropriate sanitation facilities in the big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna etc where millions of people roam around for their work and can’t find a place to urinate or defecate in a hygienic manner.
Nearly half a million migrants flow into Dhaka each year to try to make a living in the city due to various push and pull factors. If this trend continues, predictions show that by 2025, Dhaka will be home to more than 20 million people — larger than Mexico City, Beijing or Shanghai. With this massive influx of population which already poses challenges of overcrowding, pollution, poverty and overtaxing services, in absence of any planned development, the situation has already become unmanageable. One-third of the total population of Dhaka city does not have access to any sanitation facilities. They defecate in roadside drains or other open places. Since there has not been any major development project, it is likely that this situation has worsened by now.