BACOLOD City – The City Legal Office is reminding all vendors in the three major markets in this city to settle their payments with the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) to avoid displacement from their occupied stalls.
The three markets are Libertad, Central, and Burgos.
Legal Officer Romeo Carlos Ting Jr. said the earlier decision of the local market committee not to grant the request of the Burgos Market Fish Vendors’ Association (BMFVA) for a three-month extension of their arrears following the deadline yesterday, Jan. 31, still stands.
Ting said that for now, he is waiting for the list from the CTO of Burgos Market vendors who failed to settle their arrears, if any.
“We have no choice. We have to remove them because if we do not comply with what is stipulated in the notice, this will serve as precedence for the other vendors with pending accounts in the city, like in Libertad and Central,” he said.
Yesterday, Jan. 31, is the final deadline for payment for Burgos Market fish vendors, and none has made another appeal to his office, Ting added.
He cited that the city government has given multiple extensions, which aggregate to almost a year.
Lastly, he hopes all vendors have settled their payments and no vendor will be displaced.
Meanwhile, Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez announced during Tuesday’s press conference that he would issue an executive order to create a task force for the displaced vendors.
The task force will conduct profiling to determine the vendors’ capacity to start a business or the skills needed for ease of finding another source of income, the mayor added./PN
