Good timesOne News report­er Vicki Wilkin­son-Bakers tells it like it is – the toi­lets at Wel­ling­ton Sta­tion are bloody dis­gust­ing.

[O]ver the last couple of years con­di­tions have var­ied – from utterly dis­gust­ing, truly dis­gust­ing, filthy, so smelly you don’t want to breathe, to gen­er­ally grubby and unpleas­ant.

In my exper­i­ence of the ladies’ loos, they seem almost per­petu­ally grubby, the toi­let walls are covered with school­girl graf­fiti, the rub­bish bins reg­u­larly over­flow and the dis­carded debris of urb­an life – ripped panti­hose pack­ets, bana­nas, wine bottles and lip­stick pack­aging. And then there’s the issue of the nar­row doors you have to dodge through to enter the toi­let room.

The trouble, it seems, is these are really heavy duty, high-use pub­lic toi­lets that are set up for and main­tained like much lower-use loos.

Wilkin­son-Baker notes:

A while back, staff explained that the rail­way sta­tion is very busy. That’s true, it is, but so is Wel­ling­ton Air­port and their pub­lic toi­lets are fine. Shop­ping malls are busy, so are pic­ture theatres. They man­age to keep things clean and tidy. I’m assured the rail­way sta­tion toi­lets are cleaned every two or three hours. But it’s not enough. Maybe they need someone there full­time.

It’s a really simple demand – clean toi­lets. Is this really too dif­fi­cult for Kiwirail to man­age?