Toilet Talk

If a city can draw crowds big enough to jam Iznart Street, it can also plan enough toilets so people are not begging a cashier for permission to pee.

Councilor Rex Marcus Sarabia is right to be turned off by reports that some establishments required receipts or charged fees before allowing restroom use during Dinagyang.

But it is too convenient to turn this into a morality play where private businesses are cast as the villains and City Hall plays savior with threats of an ordinance.

Start with the obvious: Dinagyang is a public event, and sanitation logistics are a public responsibility.

Even by conservative estimates, the numbers are huge, with more than 120,000 people reported at the kickoff, around 26,000 packed into main judging areas, and local reports floating totals in the hundreds of thousands across the festivities.

When that many bodies hit a compact downtown, restroom demand is not a surprise, it is math, and math is the mayor’s problem, not the small diner’s.

Sarabia himself basically admitted the city came up short when he said the government plans additional handwashing stations, portable toilets, and open government buildings for comfort room access next year.

But before we start drafting fines and slapping “closed” signs on stalls, let’s recognize that an ordinance is a blunt tool for a nuanced problem. Threatening a business with a PHP 5,000.00 fine or a permit suspension might feel good in a Facebook post, but it doesn’t actually fix the plumbing.

That plan is the right direction, but it should be framed honestly as a correction to a logistical failure, not a bargaining chip to pressure private owners into absorbing the overflow.

Anyone who has run a small shop knows restroom access is not just water and soap, it is cleaning labor, supplies, plumbing wear, safety concerns, and the very real risk of facilities getting trashed when crowds surge.

Public health guidance for mass gatherings consistently flags toilets and handwashing as core infrastructure, not optional amenities you outsource when you run out of planning time.

There are also established benchmarks for how quickly toilets get overwhelmed, with humanitarian standards using a ceiling of about 20 people per toilet in crisis settings and event sanitation tables scaling up toilet counts sharply as attendance rises.

So yes, regulate if needed, but an ordinance that tries to police “receipt required” rules storefront by storefront during a festival weekend will be messy, selective, and easy to evade.

Councilor Sarabia’s mention of “improvements for next year” – including more portalets and opening government buildings – is the real smoking gun. If the city is planning to fix this next year, it means the resources weren’t there this year. Portable toilet rentals in the Philippines can cost anywhere from PHP 3,000.00 to PHP 8,000.00 per unit per day. Expecting a small shop to absorb that kind of traffic for free is a tall order.

If the council wants results by next Dinagyang, it should start with incentives and partnerships: a voluntary “Open CR Partner” program, clear standards for cleanliness and accessibility, visible stickers, shout-outs on city pages, and city-provided cleaning crews stationed in high-traffic blocks. This is a far more intelligent and inclusive solution instead of a punitive ordinance.

If City Hall is serious, it should publish a toilet map as basic as a parade route, assign accountability per zone, and treat portable toilets and open government comfort rooms as baseline services, not a last-minute apology.

And whatever policy emerges must protect the people who suffer most when restrooms become a privilege, including seniors, children, pregnant women, and persons with disabilities who cannot simply “walk to the next option” in a packed crowd.

Dinagyang’s reputation will not be saved by scolding businesses on Facebook or dangling penalties, but by doing the unglamorous work of planning sanitation the way a world-class city actually does.