Shehla Raza to raise issue of lack of public toilets for women in Sindh Assembly

Sindh Minister for Women Development Shehla Raza has vowed to raise in the Sindh Assembly the issue of lack of toilets for women at public places in the province.

Speaking with The News on Sunday, she said women comprised 56 per cent population of the country but still there were no public toilets for them at bazaars and markets in Karachi or elsewhere in Sindh.

According to Raza, this was a serious issue which also caused health problems for women. The women development minister said she would table a resolution in the assembly calling for five or six shopkeepers at each bazaar or market to establish a public toilet for women; whereas, the women who would use those toilets would pay a minimum Rs5 so that such toilets could be run.

These bathrooms should be established after every five or six shops, she said, adding that such facilities could never be established by the use of force or the government pressure but the people should initiate such projects on their own.

Raza lauded those quarters that had been raising concerns over the lack of toilets for women at public places. She said being a woman herself she could understand how much of inconvenience this was for the women who could not attend to the call of nature as they even spent six to seven hours in markets. She said fortunately shopping malls offered the facility of toilets to women but all the bazaars were not like that.

Rape cases

When asked about the increasing number of rape and gang rape cases in the province, Raza said earlier such cases were not reported but now they were being reported. Regarding prostitution, she said it was poverty that dragged girls towards this criminal profession. When girls saw deplorable conditions of their houses and they did not have employment opportunities, they were forced into prostitution, she added.

Raza said girls could not commit bank robberies like boys and prostitution appeared to them the last option to survive. She said she felt immense pain after hearing the stories of such girls. Well-to-do people should engage in more and more welfare activities so that such crimes could decline, she said.