Smelly Toilets of Islamabad Airport makes Travelling Less Fun

When you land at a foreign country, the first impression of the country is its airport where you land. After a pleasant first impression, you make up your mind that your stay in the country will probably be a good one.
This is not the case when you land onto Islamabad Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Airport. Of course after a long journey and considering that toilets in the aeroplane are congested and not everyone is easy to go there, many of us need to relieve themselves at toilets on the airport.
If you land on Islamabad Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Airport, be ready to be welcomed by a very smelly toilet that you probably do not want to go inside.
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is supposed to be managing the airport and although they have more than sufficient budget to make the toilets functional, there seems to be a lack of interest in doing it.
Overall there are six toilets for public and the airport staff but all of them are a mess. Wet toilet papers are spread all across the floors especially the toilets in the airport parking area.
A security officer at the airport expressed his views that airports depict the face of a country and CAA is successfully portraying a dirty picture of Pakistan all over the world. According to him foreigners step back while they see messy toilets. It is hard to keep our clothes from getting dirty, he added.
It is worth mentioning here that CAA collects Rupees 20 from each relative or friend of the passengers who enter the airport with the passenger. A private company is hired for this purpose.
Justice Ijaz Ahmad of Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench declared this an illegal practice almost two months ago but CAA managed to get this order suspended.
Abbas Ali, supervisor of the private company hired to collect the entry fee to the airport said that every day more than 100,000 Rupees are collected and handed over to CAA.
When CAA was contacted, their spokesman Mubarik Shah put the blame on huge number of visitors and private companies’ drivers for this issue and claimed that this issue will be resolved by CAA very soon.