More public amenities

Inasmuch as the size of the population of Addis Ababa keeps increasing, other public amenities do not seem to grow proportionately.
Public lavatories being of necessity a prerequisite of city life, they could be established at public squares, road intersections, recreation centers, in the public parks, bus stations, at religious compounds and public offices including kebeles through the direction and coordination of the City Administration. These places are indicated at random believing that they are the main locations where people concentrate in one form or another.
While such an establishment will increase the modernizing effect of a city life, it will also serve to combat partially youth unemployment. The introduction of increased and modern lavatory system will also add to the limited public amenities in the area of sanitation in a more tenable fashion.
Public lavatories should be provided for those who need it on payment of a certain fee exactly like parking fee, and for providing such a service the unemployed youth could be deployed for work on commission basis.
In this arrangement, street beggars, particularly those young mothers who earn their living on compassionate alms they collect by displaying their breast feeding children, could be in the first line of employment opportunity seekers; thus, giving them hope of a better future than harming their siblings in the scorching sun or in the bitterness of cold, or being wet to the skin in the long rains.
Employment opportunity may vary between ticket selling, floor sweeping and property upkeep. Dispensation of lavatory service on ticket could extend to some bars and restaurants as they could benefit from additional income and indirectly provides another source of employment.
If this idea could be taken as a viable input for investment project by those listed above and be discussed together with financing agencies including NGOs and philanthropists, it could easily open up an opportunity venue of employment for some of the unemployed youth all over the city.
After all, the beauty of a city is not only to be measured and weighed on the configuration and static beauty of its structures, but also on the services it affords for its residents. I think now is the time and a high time at that such ideas were properly considered, swallowed and digested before external sanitation facilities became expensive and too late to be provided for the majority of people who cannot afford the luxury of internal facilities of a booming city.
Improvisation of movable lavatories have been in place in some areas but, if my memory serves me well, they have not lasted long. Therefore, Addis will be much better, cleaner and healthier with a sort of permanent installation that could be easily cleaned up with water and soap and freshened with disinfectants and detergents consistently through the employed guys.
As the project is very much connected with laying of modern sewerage system or upgrading the existing ones, the technical side, its feasibility status, and the outlay of capital could be taken up for study by the appropriate agency.
This idea, if considered, has another advantage too. Since every service will be on price, those who come to any center of the city from the outskirts of Addis for any business, will think about it and be ready in advance to pay and use the facilities easily, or clean up thoroughly at home and come into the city feather weight.
Appropriate facilities for the extreme poor, who cannot afford to buy tickets, may be improvised likewise with some kind of lavatories and washing areas as of now instead of letting them continue littering every corner of the city including church compounds. This should be an urgent call of the millennium, and people should start to think seriously on such issues thought the city rather than to bit about the bush the old way; and to do it, follow it up, and to maintain it, rather than to leave it after it is done to the vagaries of nature.
I gather, the implementation of such an idea in the early years of the new millennium should be seen as a vital step in the right direction, and as one contributing towards a fractional solution of gradual alleviation of a trio-winged problem of our city—unemployment, begging and lack of sanitary standard.