Health Dept lists 100 clean restrooms
To make the road journey more "comfortable and clean" for thousands of Songkran travellers, the Health Department has prepared a guide to help them choose petrol stations with satisfactory restrooms.
The guide contains a list of 100 petrol stations along the four main highways that have clean and comfortable restrooms certified by the department, the Public Health Ministry's deputy permanent secretary Dr Narongsak Ungkhasuwapala said.Copies of the clean-toilet guide can be obtained at the entrances to the four major highways out of Bangkok, including at Bang Na, Bang Pa-in and Dao Khanong, today and tomorrow. Electronic copies are also available at www.anamai.moph.go.th. The Health Department recently surveyed about 550 petrol stations along four highway routes to the North, Northeast, East and South of the country and found that up to 76 per cent of restrooms were substandard in cleanliness and user friendliness. Common problems included dirty and smelly toilets, lack of sanitary measures such as hand-washing liquid, and most importantly, failing to have Western-style toilets to provide proper comfort for elderly or overweight people and pregnant women, said Theechat Boonyakarnkul, who led the toilet survey. "People touched the dirty toilets and, without hand-washing substances available, moved on to the mini-mart for food," she said. The department's director-general, Dr Somyos Charoensak, said this could spread food-borne diseases like diarrhoea. Prompted by the alarming findings, the department joined with petrol station companies to improve the quality of their toilets for the sake of their customers, Narongsak said. Somyos said that, as a consequence, the quality of petrol station toilets had improved dramatically and the 100 stations on the department's list were among them.
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