User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Indonesia

Public toilets in Indonesia are rare and have few facilities. Those that do exist are often located at hotels and public beaches. This mirrors the broader issue of sanitation access in Indonesia.

Public toilets
jamban means toilet in Malay. Squat toilets are very common in the country, with some providing a bucket for manual flushing. Most higher end hotels had public toilets in the 2000s that had diaper changing facilities. In the 2000s, public toilets were often found on public beaches in Bali and Lombok. They had few amenities. They did not have diaper changing facilities. Some public toilets may charge.

Open defecation and sanitation
WaterAid ranked the country as one of the ten worst in the world in 2016 for urban access to safe and private toilets. The Asian Development Bank started working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2013 on improving fecal sludge management, including investing in non-sewered sanitation projects, in Indonesia.

History
65% of the residents of Jakarta had no private toilet facilities in the kampung areas of the the city in the 1960s. Low wage workers continued to have issues with toilet access, both public and private, in Jakarta into the 1980s.

Open defecation was common in Tangerang in the 1990s, and the city had little in the way of sanitation facilities. Water was acquired from vendors or by treking long distances to the nearest available water source.

Community Sanitation Centers (CSCs) were opened in Tangerang in 1999. CSCs were a joint project between  Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) and Bina Ekonomi Sosial Terpadu (BEST), a local NGO, which resulted in the opening of 35 centers that provided facilities offering public toilets, public bathrooms, public washing facilities and drinking water distribution sites by 2007. These facilities have full time attendants and averaged around 1,000 visitors a day, charging a usage fee around USD$0.05 to USD$0.10. They collected biogas, which local households could buy a yearly supply of for around USD$2. Sludge collected from the toilets is used by the municipality for soil improvement efforts. They were located at places like markets, railway stations and on main roads. This helped to make these public toilets profitable for the municipality.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Indonesia
Around 2.5 billion people around the world in 2018 did not have access to adequate toilet facilities. Around 4.5 billion people lacked access to proper sanitation. Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level. Around 675 million people in South Asia practiced open defecation in 2016. This was more than any other region in the world. ASEAN developed a plan in 2002 that they asked to be implemented in member countries to expand public toilet access across the countries it represents. The goal was in part to help expand tourist infrastructure and improve regional economics.

Public toilet access has been used intentionally in South Asia to exclude certain segments of the population from participating in public life. Western public toilet standards including privatization and limited opening hours disadvantage women when implemented in countries in the Far East.

An issue in developing countries is toilet access in schools. Only 46% of schools in developing countries have them. Many schools around the world in 2018 did not have toilets, with the problem particularly acute in parts of Africa and Asia. Only one in five primary schools on earth had a toilet and only one in eight secondary schools had public toilets. In developing countries, girls are less likely to attend school once they hit puberty if their school does not have adequate hygiene facilities.

In many places in rural Asia, having toilets in a house is considered unclean. As a result, toilets are often located outside the main building for a residence or people practice open defecation because of a lack of toilet access in their homes.

Western style sit toilets are more popular among the emerging middle and upper class around the world. Across Southeast Asia in places where Western style flush toilets are found, many do not have toilet seats. These toilets may also not automatically flush, requiring manual flushing.