Improve business schemes, vendors urged

ANGELES CITY -- Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan has urged vendors at the Pampang Public Market to improve their business schemes.

During a meeting with the vendors and stall owners on Wednesday at the Shanghai Palace Restaurant, Balibago, this city, Pamintuan said there is a genuine need to improve the way vendors work and manage their businesses, especially in terms of cleanliness and orderliness to create a better environment for both patrons and sellers of the market.

This was also expressed by the mayor in his State of the City Address (SOCA) last July.

"We have visited several public markets, including Pangasinan's and Balanga's to observe their good practices in maintaining cleanliness and order in their respective public markets. We thought that if they can do it, there is no reason why we can't," Pamintuan said.

He also added that politics has nothing to do with the consultative meeting conducted.

"Long after we [public officials] are gone, the vendors of the public market are still going to stay. It doesn't matter who the mayor or officials will be in the future – the issue we are tackling today will benefit you, the vendors, and not us, in attracting more market goers to boost your sales further," Pamintuan said.

Alexander Cauguiran, Pamintuan's chief of staff, chaired the consultative meeting and provided several observations about the city's public market, citing both good and bad practices that need to be restructured.

"Stall owners and vendors have to keep in mind that the public market in Pampanga is also your second home -- and we should not treat our homes the way they are being treated today," Cauguiran said.

The chief of staff also proposed extensive short-term, medium-term and long-term recommendations to both the vendors and market officials that should be practiced and implemented in all sections of the market.

These proposals include the proper display of goods, handling and disposal of innards and blood, the installation of temporary plastic flooring panels along alleyways, implementation of product price-tagging and labelling, and even the establishment of a central evisceration area for meat cutting.

The presentation ended with an open forum where the stall owners, vendors and market administrators shared their suggestions on what they could do to promote cleanliness in their workplace.