Belen, out to revive ailing Malimgas Market

By Gerry Garcia

Plans are afoot in the incoming city administration of come-backing former Mayor Al Fernandez to stir business in the ailing 3-year-old Malimgas baby of out-going city Mayor BSL.

Newly elected Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, proven business entrepreneur in Pangasinan and Northern Luzon, recently bared introduction of innovations to make the Malimgas Public Market earn more than its current dismal revenue which is not enough to help meet its P300 million loan obligation from Land Bank of the Philippines.

The vice mayor said that part of the plan being backed up by the officials is to set up the 2nd and 3rd floors of the MPM for wet market and leave the 1st floor to dealers of dry goods.

Proof of the effectivity of this plan, Belen says, may be drawn from the success shown by the public markets of Vigan, Ilocos Sur, including Laoag and San Fernando cities in La Union in which all have their wet markets on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Even the thriving city of Urdaneta in this province which has adopted the same plan, is seen to be earning sufficiently more than this city’s Malimgas Public Market.

Since its establishment in 2004 the 2nd  floor of  the MPM has been sparsely occupied while its 3rd and roof deck designed as pay parking space hardly earned anything because the inclined ramp for cars opting for parking space on the upper floor is too steeped and risky.

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Incoming new Pangasinan Gov. Amado Espino is out to prove to his trapo predecessors that he has the ‘spines’, a strong back to help make the difference. Espino wants to show he’s different from past governors who had been using the Urduja House as business office instead of residence.

He’ll hold office at the provincial capitol where he rightly belongs, together with Vice Governor Marlyn Primicias-Agabas who holds office on the same second floor of the capitol. The capitol after all houses the Sangguniang Panlalawigan also holds session every Monday morning resided over by the vice governor, herself.

Spines intends to use Urduja as official residence where he can play host to official functions for visiting dignitaries. The capitol remains his work place.

To Gov. Spines, the capitol had always stood as a symbol of all that was great and noble and that “not even in my wildest dream as a poor boy from the small town of Bautista, I would someday stand before it as an elected Governor of the province.”

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/)

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