‘It’s unsafe next to Mananga River’

At least 100 tricycle drivers and vendors trooped  to the new Talisay city Public Market yesterday morning to inspect the proposed parking lot for tricycles.

Mario Meñamen, vice president of the drivers’ association, told Cebu Daily News he’s unsatisfied with the parking lot being constructed near the new market in barangay Lagtang because the  area was  reclaimed from the Mananga River.

Meñamen said he  feared about the area’s “safety.”

Fruit vendor Josephine Gabriana, a Lagtang resident, recalled that the river almost destroyed  the Mananga bridge during typhoon Ruping in the early 1990s.

“It’s really dangerous for us whenever the river water rises. What will happen if that happens again? We will all be swept by floods,” she said.

“We the fruit and vegetable vendors have not been heard by the mayor. He never spoke to us,” she said, referring to Talisay City Mayor Socrates Fernandez.

Freedom from Debt Coalition secretary general Aaron Pedrosa, who accompanied the group to the new market,  likened the new parking lot to  “another Balili in Talisay City.”

Pedrosa said the  location of  the new market is an “environmentally critical area” but the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is turning a deaf ear on them.

Talisay City Administrator Ritchel Bacaltos said many vendors opposed to moving to the new market went to the mayor’s office last week to ask for an extension of the deadline to apply for stalls.

However, the Talisay City Vendors’ Association clarified that the portion of the application form that reads “I am interested and willing to transfer out of my own free will…” should be changed to “I am interested to apply…”

The vendors are apprehensive that signing the application in its present form might affect a case about the transfer issue pending in court, said Paul Labalan, Talisay City public information officer.

Last May, at least 300 vendors of the Tabunok Public Market in Talisay City marched to the Talisay City Hall grounds to protest their transfer to the new market in barangay Lagtang.

The vendors said they feared they would lose customers by moving to the  new market a kilometer from the Tabunok Public Market. /Correspondent Carmel Loise Matus