Pakistan’s KP province set to launch app for public toilets

PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province is set to launch a special app on Nov. 19 that lets locals and tourists find and report on the nearest public toilet, in a bid to facilitate people and improve hygienic facilities in the area, a senior official said on Sunday.
The Public Toilet Finder App will make the hundreds of toilets in the province accessible to people in need, and allow for the monitoring of hygiene standards as users will be able to report any serious deficiencies in cleanliness.
“Roughly, we have the data of 200 plus (public) toilets right now. In addition to that, 700 petrol pumps and Compressed National Gas (CNG) stations in 12 districts have toilets. The launch phase of the project next week will include over a hundred toilets, which will be gradually updated,” Imran Ullah Mohmand, assistant coordinator for the Water and Sanitation Services Cell (W&SC) at the local government department, told Arab News.

The toilet app was Mohmand’s brainchild, who was unable to find a toilet during a 2011 work trip to Charsaddah near Peshawar city.
“Since then, alongside my colleagues, I started work to develop an app to help people find the nearest available toilet. We have now materialized that idea into a reality and people will be able to download the app from the playstore on November 19,” Mohmand said.
The national telecommunication authority of Pakistan reported in 2018 that the number of cellular service subscribers had crossed the 150 million mark, with over 55 million high speed Internet phone users. The population of KP province, according to a 2017 census, is over 35 million people, about 17 percent of the country’s total population of 210 million.

A UNICEF report in 2015 stated that 41 million people in Pakistan had no access to adequate toilets and according to Mohmand, an overwhelming 86 percent of the population surveyed in KP had said they supported the development of an app that would help them find the nearest public toilet.
However, Mohmand conceded that the state of cleanliness in the province’s available toilets was not up to standard the first time his team concluded their visits of the 700 CNG and petrol pumps to check cleanliness and the availability of water.
“But during our follow-up visits, we found a 40 percent improvement in those toilets in terms of the availability of facilities,” Mohmand continued.
Normally, he said, the district municipal administration would oversee the state of toilets but the W&SC had been officially mandated to keep a check on water and sanitation issues in the province.
Additionally, he said, the app would allow users to send photos of toilets that did not meet hygiene standards to the W&SC, which would subsequently take action with the concerned parties to fix up the facility.

Sayed Jaffar Shah, former provincial minister and a senior leader of opposition party, the Awami National Party (ANP), said the public welfare project was a step in the right direction but that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government often left projects half finished despite their good ideas.
“We appreciate every good step of any government. The launch of the Public Toilet Finder App is great, but I’m sure the PTI government will not be able to sustain it for long,” Shah said.
Noorshad Wazir, a student at the University of Peshawar, said clean toilets should have been available at public places years ago and that women, travelers and tourists were especially seriously inconvenienced in the province.
“If they can maintain it (the toilets) properly, it will be a commendable job by the government,” Wazir said.
But Mohmand is optimistic that the app will be met with success and eventually expand to the entire country, and even used as a tool to promote greater tourism.

“The app contains information about the location of toilets, for males and females, children and disabled persons. It also lets users know about car parking, the availability of soap, water and other amenities at the toilet,” he said, and added that his department hoped they would be able to eventually ensure the availability of toilets at public places such as parks, bus stands and main highways “to materialize the dream” of a clean Pakistan.
“The best feature of the entire project is that the public will themselves monitor cleanliness or other deficiencies in toilets,” he said.
“And we will be available all the time to take swift action to address their grievances.”