Submitted by Vox Bikol on
NAGA CITY (12 November) — SOME 2,000 stall-owners at the Naga City Public Market belonging to the Naga Market Stallholders Federation Inc. (NAMASFED) are under pressure from a created Special Study Committee of the Sangguniang Panlunsod to submit to an immediate 100% increase in rentals in the City’s public market stall before the end of this year.
Since October 22, a majority of some 1,500 NAMASFED members clad in red t-shirts have been marching to the City hall here during a protest dubbed, “Lakaw-Kontra-Langkaw” to strongly oppose an earlier proposed ordinance to increase market stall rates by 400% which was later lowered to 300% and was to be implemented in a 3-year period.
The latest hike proposal seeks to amend current Ordinance no. 2005-027 prescribing a socialize rental rate based on the sections of the public market.
NAMASFED Federation president, Claro “Lalo” Alfonso, revealed that the City Council’s Market Affairs Committee chaired by councilors Esteban Abonal and Salvador Del Castillo recommended in a committee report during the recent Sangguniang Panlunsod session a lowering of the rate increase from 300% to 100%.
Alfonso said that NAMASFED position was to oppose any proposed increases after a 200% rental increase was already implemented by the City government last April 2003 to save the LGU from subsidizing supposed losses of the market.
The said increase was recommended then by a task force on the city public market under Sangguniang Panlunsod resolution no 2003-241.
Alfonso added that they are making a counter proposal to break the deadlock in the negotiations between the market federation and the City government.
He explained that they are proposing for only a 60% increase in the rentals with the initial 30% being implemented in 2012 while the other 30% in 2013.
According to Alfonso, the counter proposal of the federation was primarily to consider claims by the Market Affairs Committee on the renovation expenses of the City government amounting to P87 Million and another P70 Million from the national government after sections of the public market were razed by series of fires in November 2008, December 2009, and January 2010.
Alfonso furthered that despite a relocation of stalls, the fires have practically displaced most of the stall owners during the period of the reconstruction from 2009 to 2010; moreover, the stakeholders were required by the city to pay the stall rentals during the period of the renovation.
He added that more than 100 stall-owners have not yet been relocated pending the renovation of Phase III of the market which is scheduled to be completed before the end of 2010.
Earlier, Market committee members councilors Abonal and Del Castillo were under fire from NAMASFED members for pushing the 400% rental increase; the councilors claimed this was based on current commercial rate rentals of establishments within the perimeter of the market along Igualdad and Prieto streets of the city.
With the CBD-II steadily expanding due to the entry of Shoemart in the new business district, the exorbitant market increase rentals reportedly will go to the improvements of Central Business District I.
But Metro Naga Chamber of Commerce and Industry president, Alberto Bercasio said “an exorbitant increase in the market rentals violates the mandate of the creation of the public market as a social enterprise of the city providing micro-entrepreneurs to grow and even survive.”
Bercasio uncharacteristically noted that given the current situation, “the government should at least increase rentals that will enable to recover the public market’s overhead expenses and provide savings for its future maintenance, but not necessarily to compete with the rates of the commercial establishments.”Constructed since the early 1960s, the Naga City Public Market was considered then an ultra-modern market structure with parking spaces in its upper floors; in recent years it has been marred by controversies of proposed privatization, unaccounted collections amounting to P1.9-Million in 2008, the unsolved murder of market supervisor Paco Ojeda, and mysterious fires that razed the market in the last three years. (SONNY SALES)