The writing on the wall for ambulant Carbon vendors gets clearer with every passing day. More unmistakable signs are afoot that Cebu City and Megawide never had the intention of retaining ambulant vendors in a modernized Carbon market. (Not to forget that ambulant vendors include many nga naninda lang ug inad-ad nga utanon or pila ka pundok sa seashells etc.)
First, ambulant vendors were never consulted when Cebu City and Megawide signed a joint venture agreement (JVA) to modernize Carbon. The former didn’t get a copy of the JVA until after the ground-breaking ceremonies.
Next, when they openly opposed (not the modernization but the privatization of Carbon), they were verbally assured spots in the new Carbon. Yet till now the City and Megawide have yet to produce a signed commitment and master list of ambulant vendors that the new Carbon will accommodate.
Sa binisaya, mora’g giminosan kay gilipat-lipat lang nila ang mga ambulant vendors who have actually been ejected from their traditional selling spots and kicked around at the discretion of Megawide’s subsidiary C2W that is now calling the shots in Carbon.
Now that the Puso Village and the mechanical parking facility cannot operate because of a court injunction, high-end vendors who invested in the Village are prioritized for placement in alternative spaces and ambulant vendors are being displaced again to give way to a non-mechanical parking space.
The last straw is a proposed ordinance to revise the Market Code of 2017. This defines ambulant vendors as “those who received a certificate of recognition (as of December 2020) and who are not renting or occupying a definite or permanent stall.” This new definition is a death sentence to ambulant vendors none of whom have received whatever it is the City calls a “certificate of recognition.”
In addition, “All fees collected from the Cebu Carbon Market shall be collected by Megawide’s subsidiary, C2W.“ Worse still, “In case of Carbon Market (sic), if the vacancy is not filled within the 15-day period, C2W shall have the right to select the vendor who will be permitted to lease vacant Stall Space.”
This makes the new Carbon a business venture of a private enterprise and no longer a service provided by the city to its constituents. Under the set-up, ambulant vendors just don’t stand a chance of surviving. Many of them cannot afford the rent and miscellaneous fees imposed by the business enterprise that now runs Carbon.
What’s left going for ambulant vendors is their petition for injunction before a court of law. But knowing how slow courts work in this country, by the time the judge decides, the Carbon public market we know might no longer be there.
In its place, will stand another world-class mall that Cebu City has plenty of already. It will be a business venture, no longer a public service of Cebu City to its penny-pinching buying and selling public. It’s a crying shame.