World Toilet Day:

Deplorable public toilets in Kumba
By Sirri NTONIFOR TANGWE in Kumba

Kumba City's Number One Toilet

The 2015 World Toilet Day observed on November 19 and focusing on the link between sanitation and nutrition, has brought certain unpleasant facts to the fore in Kumba. Unlike previous years, there were no council activities to commemorate the day with council personnel laying the blame for this at the feet of an NGO, Cameroon Toilet Organisation – CAMTO - which in years past made the day an eventful one.
    It would appear that without CAMTO, no attention could be paid to the toilet sanitation crisis in Kumba with an excess of pit latrines, and an inadequate number of public toilets which are almost all located only in markets.
    In fact, Kumba follows the world trend where more people have mobile phones than toilets. Without CAMTO, the Kumba City Council would not even look within its living quarters to clean the toilets attached to its City hall whose condition is worse than deplorable. A visit to that toilet would put off the healthiest appetite, with dried faeces stuck unto the floors and the toilet pot full of ... A dripping sink stands to the side, constantly moisturising the dirt on the floor while spiders compete in handicraft, displaying their artistry all over the room.

    The blame may have been laid at the foot of CAMTO for not showing up to lead the Councils to help their communities arise to the realities of toilet sanitation, but it is equally noteworthy to mention that on this World Toilet Day, coming just a day after Meme CPDM reorganisation exercises, the ‘exercisers’ must have been so tired that the Health and Sanitation department of the Kumba City Council was, to a man, absent from their offices at 10 am.
    Meanwhile, the Kumba Government Delegate, Ngoh Nkelle Victor, was catering to party affairs in Meme IC and would only be available, ‘they’ said, the following week. The Number One toilet in the municipality could, I guess, wait till the Government Delegate’s return or next year’s World Toilet Day, to be attended to before other toilets in the municipality follow suit.