Officials advised to learn lessons from toilet saga

Officials tasked with revitalising countryside areas are being urged to learns lessons over a HK$13 million "smart toilet" which turned out to be anything but. Users of the toilet in the New Territories village of Lai Chi Wo were promised a hands-free experience, with the amenity boasting automatic sliding doors that opened and closed with just a wave. After almost two years of construction, the toilet was completed in the summer of 2023 and was trumpeted as a showpiece facility that could boost the image of countryside washrooms. But it all went down the pan not long after it opened. "On 9 December 2023, a user was locked up inside the new public toilet as the automatic sliding door could not be opened by waving hands over the control panel or pressing the emergency button," the Audit Commission noted in a report on Wednesday. It was later discovered that special panels installed on the roof of the toilet, which were meant to purify air as well as generate electricity, were not producing enough power. The auditor said the automatic door system was subsequently disabled and the sliding doors converted to manual operation "to restore the public’s confidence over the usage of the toilet". It noted that as well as supposedly being "smart", the toilet was also originally estimated to have been almost HK$5 million cheaper than it was. The Audit Commission said the Countryside Conservation Office responsible for the project should draw on the experience it gained with the toilet when it embarks on other minor improvement works in the future.