Mohammed defends $5 market washroom fee

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed has de­fend­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of a $5 fee to use the wash­rooms at Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket, say­ing the charges are nec­es­sary to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ties and pre­vent them from falling in­to dis­re­pair.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, Mo­hammed said the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion had spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 to re­pair and re­store the mar­ket’s toi­let fa­cil­i­ties about two years ago, but was re­peat­ed­ly forced to car­ry out fur­ther re­pairs be­cause of mis­use.

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“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, de­spite this sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment, the cor­po­ra­tion was re­peat­ed­ly re­quired to un­der­take re­pairs and ad­dress in­stances of mis­use, in­clud­ing the re­moval of T-shirts and oth­er for­eign ob­jects from toi­let bowls,” he said.