Just over 4,000 private homes in The Bahamas make use of outside toilets, unconventional toilet facilities or are without toilet facilities at all, according to a report released by the Department of Statistics. According to the 'Private Dwellings by Type and Use of Toilet Facilities and Main Source of Water Supply Report', which was released last week, a total of 2,125 of the 102,758 households across The Bahamas use pit latrines, which is another name for outside toilets.

The report also shows that 209 households have no form of toilet facilities and another 1,318 households use "other" toilet facilities, which includes the use of slop buckets or the disposing of waste in the bushes, according to an official from the Department of Statistics. Most of those homes that fall in those three categories do not have indoor plumbing and depend solely on public wells, tanks or the public stand pipes also known as public water pumps as their main source of water.

In fact, only 242 of the households with outside toilets have water piped into their homes or yards. As for the households that fall into the "other" category, 17 of them have water inside their homes or in their yards. Of the 209 households which don't have any toilet facilities, 28 of them have water piped into their homes or yards. And while a small number of households use unconventional means to dispose of their waste, the majority of the Bahamian households make use of sewerage and septic toilet facilities.

According to the report, 13,378 households have sewerage systems and 85,728 have septic facilities. Just over 90 percent of the households in the country have water piped into their homes, the report noted. That's 92,948 of the 102,758 households. Another 1,657 have public water piped into their yards. Statistics also indicate that 2,040 private homes have no water piped into them.

In total the main source of water for 2,351 households is the public stand pipe, for 2,041 it is the public well or tank and 1,094 use a rain water system. Six hundred and twenty seven households use "other" sources of water. There are approximately 270 stand pipes in New Providence. The use of public wells and tanks is more common in the Family Islands, according to a Department of Statistics representative.

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