PEOPLE ought to prioritize issues of toilets and water, in every form of infrastructure development.
Surprisingly, most buildings in our society, including some key public institutions like hospitals, churches, shopping malls etc., are either without these key facilities, or are in a deplorable state if they have them.
Why we do not place any significance in having toilets, and in clean and good working condition, is something we cannot understand because, after all, we all need them.
We have visited settlements in some parts of our nation where people live without toilets but luckily for them, the bush is just a stone throw away from their houses.
But we have also seen houses in our townships, which are without toilets and occupants have to almost always beg to use their neighbours’ toilets every time they want to answer the call of nature – a rather embarrassing situation.
Some public places, like shopping malls or schools, churches, bus stations and others, may of course have some form of toilets alright, but they are rather in a very bad condition and yet the people are sometimes requested to pay a fee to use them.
We have also lived long enough in towns, like Lusaka, for instance where there are instutions charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the public is provided with places of convenience and yet they don’t.
And where they do, it is only partially done and people are forced to almost always give up using them – another rather discommoding situation.
But then, if we may ask, why do we almost always pay no attention to toilets by ensuring in the first place that we have them always in a good working condition where they exist?
We always want to feed our bodies and yet we forget about ensuring that we also have a place to dispose our faecal matter.
Others may even want to always rely on short cuts when it answering calls of nature – they would rather use plastic bags, Chibuku packs and then discard them, just like that, hence creating another health hazard for themselves and other people.
In our view, the failure to place serious attention to having toilets, and good working toilets for that matter, has totally nothing to do with financial inability or manpower but simply attitude.
If only we could transform our attitude and place some regard on the importance of a toilet to our human life, the situation could change for better.
It is because we have no regard to having a toilet that we would rather simply chose to put up temporal structures made from sacks, used cement bags or card boards.
We usually do not mind the standards and conditions of these structures, and not even about the level of privacy they can provide.
We seriously need to change our attitudes towards the importance of having access to a good toilet.
For this reason, we find it rather shocking that a place, like the local court in Ndola’s Chipulukusu Township has been operating without a place of convenience, for both the public and officials, since 1994.
Just how can someone construct a busy place, like a local court, without a toilet and allow it to operate just for this long? Where is our local authority or the government builings inspectors?
We ask so many questions about this situation and many other government buildings which are operating in a similar situation. Of course, it is not our role to put anyone on trial but simply to remind everyone that, we need to get serious as a people about the key role places of convenience play in our lives.
Let us for once prioritize the issue of toilets by ensuring that they in good and clean working conditions.
Toilets play a key role in our lives. They help us live healthy and longer lives.
