Opposition councilor to Labella: Find place for displaced sidewalk vendors

The vendors along the sidewalk of B. Rodriguez Street will be regulated by the PROBE team. CDN Digital photo | St. Benilde Intern Enrique Bejar

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City opposition Councilor Alvin Dizon urged Mayor Edgardo Labella to reconsider his plan to clear all of the city’s sidewalks of vendors amid the start of the clearing operations today, Thursday, September 26, 2019.

Dizon made this appeal in response to the recent statement of Labella that the city would strictly implement the directive of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to clear the streets of obstruction, despite the plea of sidewalk vendors organizations to spare them.

Read More: Sidewalk vendors to Cebu City gov’t, DILG: Don’t deprive us of livelihood

“I am of the conviction that while the city needs to comply with the DILG’s directive to clear our roads, we need to do balancing of interests so as not to prejudice the right to livelihood of our street vendors,” said Dizon in a statement on Thursday.

Dizon said that the city also has to come up with a plan that would help the vendors adjust to and recover from the effects of the DILG directed clearing.

He asked the mayor to find alternative ways to keep the vendors selling their goods in the city without them being an obstruction on the streets and sidewalks.

“Life is so difficult nowadays with the rising cost of living. We can clean up the city’s streets but let us not get rid of the vendors entirely,” he said.

“We can put the interests of the street vendors and the working poor on the same table as those of the rest of the public. We can make Cebu a model city of inclusive development if we work closely with urban planners, civil society groups, as well as the vendors themselves,” he added.

Labella recently said that he will provide a space beside the Senior Citizen’s Park on Magallanes Street and the stretch of F. Gonzales Street for a night market that will serve as a temporary area for the displaced sidewalk vendors.

However, he said no sidewalk vendors will be allowed to sell in any other area of the city in the morning.

Read more: Labella unaffected by vendors protest; to continue implementation of no sidewalk vending policy

For the long term, Labella plans to build a tenement market where the sidewalk vendors will have stalls to sell their goods. The place for the tenement market has not yet been identified.

At least 800 sidewalk vendors will be cleared from the Cebu City’s sidewalk following the DILG directives. /elb