Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Sidewalk vendors decry dispersal By Ma. Cecilia Rodriguez Correspondent
AN ENFORCER of the Traffic Management Action Force (TMAF) slapped a pregnant woman: it was a bloody Maundy Thursday dispersal of Cogon sidewalk vendors.
Several eyewitnesses said TMAF team leader, retired Capt. Mario Flora, and pointed his .45 caliber gun menacingly at the sidewalk vendors as his men used batons and steel pipes to drive them away.
Several vendors tried to fight back, beating some TMAF enforces until Flora allegedly threaten any vendor who will resist.
Others merely wept helplessly, thinking of where they will get the next day's meal with their only source of income all gone.
Fruits and other selling items were strewn all over the place. Sidecars (sikad) used by the vendors were hauled onto a truck to be taken to the RTA compound.
Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro tried to reach Flora through his cellphone to get his side but failed Monday
Fruit vendor Efie Medio, who chairs the Coalition for Recognition and Empowerment of Street Vendors Association (CRESVA), decried the TMAF and the City Government's violent treatment of sidewalk vendors.
"The problem is not us, it is the lack of management system in Cogon market. We have been asking the City Government to arrange a fair and just system in the market, where even the small vendors will get fair treatment. But they insist on putting us in the third floor where there are no customers and we sell nothing because we can't compete with the wholesalers who are in the third floor," Medio said.
He said CRESVA, which represents 315 sidewalk vendors in Cogon, has proposed to the city government to set-up a sectioning system in the Cogon market.
"This means there should be a fruit section, meat section, dry goods section. This would give fair opportunity to all vendors, whether small or big retailers," Medio said.
Medio said their association also criticized the City Government for not imposing price control mechanisms to protect consumers and small vendors.
"There is no price regulation. Small vendors cannot compete with big retailers who set lower prices because we merely loan our capital and we have to roll the money to keep us afloat," Medio said.
"There must be another way to settle the issue without violence. These on-going battles between us vendors and the RTA/TMAF should stop. I call on Mayor Jaraula to take action with fairness and sincerity," he added.
But the sidewalk vendors have no way to go to sell their wares.
"Maybe they haven't experienced how it is to go hungry, or how it is to see their family cry of hunger. Vending is the only source of living we know. While we do not want to cause any trouble, they should also treat us justly," Vendor Val Dungog he said
Dungog said all of his fellow sidewalk vendors fear the law, but they what they feared most is hunger.
Medio said an elderly vendor had already died of hunger at her home in Macabalan after her goods were confiscated by TMAF. With no other source to feed herself and her three grandchildren, Medio said the vendor died inside her house while her grandchildren were out looking for food in the garbage piles in Cogon public market.
