The day is coming when being short on cash in Guangzhou will no longer mean having to ignore nature's call.

The city is putting together a plan to drop the fees at its public toilets as soon as next week.

"We are drawing up a scheme that would give people free access to public toilets. The policy will be announced soon," Jiang Min, an official at the Guangzhou Environment and Sanitation Bureau, said in an interview with China Daily.

Residents of this city have complained that making a pit stop when out on the town can be complicated since there are few public toilets and many of those that do exist require fees.

"The scheme, to be effective next week, aims to make better use of the city's public toilets," Jiang said.

Guangzhou will be joining Hangzhou, in east China's Zhejiang Province, and Guilin, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China, in providing free access to public toilets once the plan takes effect.

At present, about half of the city's public toilets, mainly those in the old downtown area, are free to the public.

Jiang said the toilets in the city's Huangpu District and more than 80 others in Tianhe District are free.

In addition to dropping the fees, she said, the bureau is raising money to increase the number of public toilets in the years to come.

The city has experienced a shortage of public toilets, especially in some busy commercial streets, like Beijing Road and Shangxiajiu Road.

"Because of the high density of the buildings along these commercial streets and in old downtown areas, there is little room to build public toilets," Jiang said.

The city has just about 1,000 public toilets, she said.

(China Daily February 9, 2007)