The City of Harare has announced on Twitter that they will be leasing toilets out to individuals, companies or consortia.
Using a public or council toilet in Harare is not for the faint-hearted. Most of them have gained the reputation of being overwhelmingly disgusting. One would have to prepare themselves to see anything on the ground from urine to faeces and condoms. That’s if you even manage to stand the smell.
The City of Harare has also expressed in the tweet that the toilets would need a capital injection to function, something they presumably do not have. But funny enough…that is the city council’s responsibility. How expensive is it to run a toilet? It would make more sense for them to make people pay a small fee to use toilets that go towards buying detergents and paying the attendants to clean the facilities.
The City of Harare already has a reputation of looking for money through introducing fines or increasing fines. They also already struggle with waste collection. By making this announcement, the City of Harare has officially declared that they are unable to maintain public toilets and they have decided to turn them into a business instead. Is it possible to stoop any lower?