Women hold up half the sky but lack toilets on the ground

Why are there only 15 bathrooms for about 500,000 people who commute daily into Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital?

COLOMBO: “Menstruating monthly is not an illness,” says Sumithra Randenigala, who works as a security guard in Sri Lanka’s largest city, Colombo. But when she has her monthly period, the 26-year-old often calls in sick to work.

Getting her pay docked some days each month is a better alternative than being unable to use the toilet during the two-hour daily train commute from her sleepy seaside town Bentota to Colombo Fort Station.

“If I need to change my pad, the toilet on the train is locked or blocked. At work, guards aren’t allowed to use the office toilet,” she tells me at the Sri Lanka Tea Board, where she works.

She attended school till age 14, where she learnt about urinary tract infections (UTIs) in class. She knows the importance of changing her sanitary pad frequently. After several painful experiences of contracting UTIs, she now chooses to forfeit her daily pay sometimes, rather than risk an infection that would force her to take a week of unpaid sick leave.

What are the options for Sumithra and others like her who come into Colombo daily to work?

Women’s needs

Limited access to toilets affects women disproportionately. Women in the workforce are usually of reproductive age, needing to navigate monthly menstrual periods and/or pregnancies during these years. The paucity of toilets in Colombo reflects a planning process did not take women’s needs into consideration.

This lack of a gender-inclusive approach in urban planning forces women to devise workarounds during their commute and workday. Iromi Perera and Meghal Perera at the Colombo Urban Lab point out that, due to the gendered impacts of heat stress, women may drink less water or take time off work to go home or somewhere close by to use the bathroom.”

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2020 report estimated Colombo’s population at more than 612,000 and a daily floating population of about 500,000 workers. Compared to the rest of the country with an average population density of 325 persons per kilometre, Colombo is densely populated with just over 13,000 persons per kilometre.

How many public toilets does Colombo have? Who decides how many toilets Colombo needs, and where they should be located? The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) and the Urban Development Authority (UDA) are both involved, resulting in no single organisation being accountable for progress or lack thereof.

Colombo has 15 working toilets for its commuter population of approximately 500,000, according to the Global Public Toilet Index which looks at how many restrooms are available for each 100,000 people in a city. Colombo has about three per 100,000 persons. By comparison, Chiang Mai, Thailand, has about 92 public toilets per 100,000 persons, making it the “global capital of public toilet access.”

“Colombo’s 15 public toilets haven’t been upgraded since 2019,” Mayor Vraie Cally Balthazaar tells me in her office in the iconic Town Hall, a building inspired by Washington DC’s Capitol.

Balthazaar, Colombo’s second female mayor, aims to improve these inadequate facilities during the remaining three years of her four-year term.

Clean Sri Lanka?

The UDA refers me to its City of Colombo Development Plan (2022–2031) detailing Colombo’s current urban spatial condition, with streetscapes and promenades to be introduced. The plan “aims to improve the quality of public realm” and the streetscape, “offering a safe and convenient sidewalk for pedestrians.”

The 462-page report makes no mention of public toilets.

Colombo’s development towards becoming a megapolis continues apace.  Steel skyscrapers shimmer as they catch the rays of the setting sun over Port City’s new marina, built on reclaimed land. Luxury condominiums tower over the city’s colonial-era Fort, slated for urban regeneration.

Once lauded as the Garden City of the East, Colombo now needs to urgently improve access to public toilets.

After being elected in September 2024, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake launched the Clean Sri Lanka project aiming to upgrade sanitary facilities nationwide utilizing existing petrol stations to install 1,500 new toilets.

Who pays for these toilets? Currently the Clean Sri Lanka project is funded by both the government and corporate sponsors. A new model under discussion suggests mixed developments where a shopfront’s income is used to maintain the toilet blocks.

The Clean Sri Lanka project’s implementation in greater Colombo and surrounding Western Province towns is managed by Hanif Yusoof, Governor of the Western Province. He tells Global Southasia that work is “ongoing”, and that the UDA is currently overseeing toilet construction.

He says they have conducted in-depth research to identify key sites now earmarked for toilets near the Mount Lavinia Railway Station and the Pettah Central Bus Station, “both of which have a high commuter footfall.”

P. Samanthi Mudiyanselage Hema, 40, works for Abans, a large conglomerate to which the CMC has subcontracted street cleaning services. If she doesn’t get to the maduwa (work tent) by 6 am, she’s not guaranteed work that day. She receives 800 rupees (USD 2.43) for working eight hours daily.

The maduwa toilets are restricted to office workers, and the public toilet is a twenty-minute walk away.

“I don’t drink water while I’m sweeping,” Samanthi says. “Then I don’t need to look for a toilet.”

When temperatures soar, she cannot always hold out, then must pay to use the facilities at a nearby shop.

Men ‘manage’

“I have no issues,” says Kithsiri Devaka, her 58-year-old male co-worker, when asked the same questions about where he uses a bathroom.  “I manage,” he adds, smiling.

Kaushika de Alwis, 32, works as a cashier at Colombo’s new Port City Mall. She commutes from her town Moratuwa, about 90 minutes away by bus. Unlike the security guard Sumithra, she is allowed to use the bathrooms at work.

But on the days she has her period, she takes a taxi instead, as there are no toilets in the bus or the bus station. The additional expense takes up 25% of her daily wage.

From my home in Colombo 6, it is a 17-minute walk to the nearest public toilet, which costs twenty rupees to enter. I join a line of women, some carrying babies. It takes about ten minutes to gain access to a cubicle. It is well lit and sparkling clean.

Clearly, the toilets in our aspirational metropolis are usable and well maintained. There just need to be at least ten times as many of them. Even with 30 toilets per 100,000 commuters, Colombo would still have only a third of Chiang Mai’s rate.

If either the CMC or the UDA had a clear mandate to construct and manage public toilets, urban planners and activists could then hold that institution accountable.

“What a blessing it would be if all train stations had toilets for us to use,” muses Sumithra, preparing to board her southbound train.

Nadia John Nagpal is an A Level student in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She was a quarter finalist in the first ever Politic High School Essay Competition. She believes ‘History’ should equally be ‘Herstory’, loves to travel anywhere there’s a beach and spends weekends comparing the ceremonial grade of matcha across Colombo’s cafes.

This is a Global Southasia (formerly Sapan News) syndicated feature available for republication with due credit to sapannews.com.

Why ‘Southasia’ as one word? Because our histories entangle, our struggles intersect, and our futures are bound together.

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