OVER 50 market vendors in Mankayan, Benguet, who are caught in a boundary dispute between Mankayan and Buguias towns fear they could lose their livelihood.
"The vendors are fearing for their livelihood as well as their safety,” Inglay Capuyan Fokno, a lawyer for the vendors, said.
Fokno said that in 2014, the municipality of Mankayan, represented by Mayor Materno Luspian, filed a case against the municipality of Buguias, represented by Mayor Melchor Diclas involving overlapping claims to a property that straddles the two towns and where the Mankayan public market stands.
Fokno said that in July the courts ordered the two towns to maintain the status quo before the claims were filed.
The market, which is actually a multipurpose gym, has vendors from the two municipalities, he said.
“These vendors are the same vendors displaced when Buguias constructed a market in an area close to the gym," Fokno said.
Last April, Diclas issued a notice to the vendors to vacate the market on or before May.
"The vendors disregarded the notice, finding it unjust that they be evicted that easily from the gym when they have been doing business therein since 1996, have been religiously paying taxes, not given sufficient time to relocate, no assurance that they’ll be given priority to stalls when the market will be completed, their plea for a temporary relocation site was ignored,” Fokno said.
In June, Department of the Interior and Local Government Regional Director John Castaneda responded to Benguet Vice Governor Dangwa’s inquiry regarding the wisdom of issuing a status quo order in the Mankayan-Buguias dispute.
Fokno said cases were filed regarding the dispute but were either dismissed or abandoned.
“It is only now that Mankayan is really bent on having the dispute fully addressed and resolved," he said.
Fokno said a month after the status quo order was issued, the contractor who won the bid to renovate the market had the place fenced off.
“At that time, the vendors’ goods were still in the gym. Afraid of what will happen, the vendors did not get into their stalls the following day thereby causing them loss of income and damage to goods," Fokno said.