THE displaced ambulant fish vendors are not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

After a more than two-hour hearing of the Dagupan Sangguniang Panlungsod’s committee on markets last Thursday, September 2, on the plight of 72 small-scale ambulant fish vendors in the city who were relocated to another site not easily accessible to the buying public, no proposed solution or compromise was reached to settle the issue.

Councilor Teresa Coquia, chairman on the SP committee on markets, said she and her colleagues will meet again in the next few days and vowed to come out with a win-win solution to the satisfaction of small-scale fish vendors and stall holders of the Magsaysay Fish Market.

Earlier, she only suggested that the ambulant vendors return to their old location but must agree to occupy only a two-meter elevated space of the road where the gutter was placed.

The Small-scale Fish Consignment Owners and Vendors led by Marietta Ballesteros sought the help of the SP to persuade Mayor Brian Lim to allow them to return them to their old places on the right side of the Magsaysay Market where they had been selling fish for decades.

They said they cannot sell fish items where they are relocated. Without their livelihood, they cannot feed their families particularly in the middle of a pandemic.

Ballesteros’ group attempted to have an audience with Mayor Lim but they were ignored.

At the committee hearing, the group accused the members of the Magsaysay Fish Consignacion and Ice Dealers Association led by Jerry Ballesteros of lobbying with city hall to have the ambulant vendors removed and be relocated to an area fronting Sitio Intramuros.

But Ballesteros denied his group had a hand in the ambulant vendors relocation but it could have been the action taken by Mayor Lim after a dialogue with the latter when he asked about the group’s problems.

The group merely mentioned the “unfair competition” from the ambulant vendors at the Magsaysay Market.

But Randolph Ubando of the city market office, added it was the road clearing operations of the DILG that had to be implemented and the need to protect the fish vendors by decongesting the area so the vendors are not susceptible to the COVID-19 virus infection.

The vendors, however, promptly belied Ubando’s claim because the relocation site is still part of the roadside. Councilor Jose Netu Tamayo backed the move to relocate the ambulant vendors.

There were reports that the vendors were relocated to give way to big cargo trucks that are delivering fish daily to the Magsaysay Fish Market.

“We will try in a week’s time to resolve the issue,” Coquia said. (Leonardo Micua)

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