The idea is to reuse the WC infrastructure of the World Youth Day to provide a "short and medium term response" to the "progressive disappearance of public toilets" in Lisbon. In the long term, it is intended to create a public and free network of toilets.
The PCP councilmen of Lisbon's City Council proposed - and the city council unanimously approved - that a part of the toilets that will be requisitioned for the World Youth Day will be acquired by the municipality and reused in the city to respond to "shortage of public toilets"Such is the case with green parks, "in a short to medium term response". In the long term, the approved idea is to create a free public toilet network in the city.
In the proposal that João Ferreira and Ana Jara saw approved by all councilmen at the February 23rd City Council meeting, one can read that "the progressive disappearance of public sanitary facilities and the increasing degradation of those that persist, due to lack of management and maintenance, constitutes a problem for the city of Lisbon". "For much of the people who move around the city on a daily basis, the scarcity of clean, accessible bathrooms, without being associated with commercial consumption in restaurants and cafes is a concrete problem."
O new outdoor advertising concession contract between the Câmara de Lisboa and the French company JCDecauxThe contract, which specializes in the manufacture and installation of urban furniture with advertising spaces, provides for the replacement and reinforcement of the city's public toilets. The contract covers only the toilets that have advertising space. Currently there are 39 WCs of this type in Lisbon, according to data from the municipality; in the new concession it is foreseen duplication of this equipmentwith the replacement of the 39 existing toilets by 75 new of which at least 10% will be prepared to receive people with reduced mobilitynamely in a wheelchair.
For the communists, this new advertising concession will not give a "universal response to existing needs"nor will it ensure "adequate conditions for access to sanitary facilities in public space". The PCP understands that "Having a network of public toilets, as well as drinking fountains, in the city of Lisbon is a factor in promoting public health and maintaining the hygiene and salubrity of the public space; but, until now, its existence has not been assured nor planned according to the needs of the daily life of the city's inhabitants and visitors; even more pressing at a time when Lisbon is preparing to receive thousands of people“.
The approved proposal urges the Lisbon Municipality to "to make, in articulation with the Parish Councils, a survey that characterizes all the public toilets in Lisbon, their state of conservation, needs and capacities in relation to the places where they are located, with the objective of inserting them in a future Lisbon city network".to, also in articulation with the Boards, establish "a plan for the rehabilitation and construction of public sanitary facilities, in order to make up for the existing insufficiencies, with a view to providing the city with a network with permanent, free-use sanitary facilities, and properly suited to specific locations and requests". And since all this work still takes time, the reuse of the WCs of the World Youth Day was advanced as a quick and temporary solution.
Because the will of the PCP councilmen is to create a free public toilet network in the citythey also proposed "to intercede with the entities that oversee the concessions of spaces inserted in infrastructures (stations, terminals, interfaces) or collective equipment, in order to eliminate pay-use restrictions in their public access toilet facilities“. The city council also approved, as proposed by the communists, the creation of a digital application that identifies the locations and operating status of drinking fountains and all public toilets and bathrooms in Lisbon, "to be operational by July 2023".
