BAGUIO CITY – The city government is losing more than P200,000 per day to illegal activities involving stalls at the city public market.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong said an ongoing inventory and audit of stalls at the market uncovered more glaring irregularities than what was initially reported to him.
“It was amazing really as there were stalls paying P4,500 monthly to the city but are being sub-leased for P100,000 and others being charged by the city for P300 but subleased for P5,000 to P10,500,” he bared in his Ugnayan press briefing Feb. 26.
“There were even those who were able to sell their rights over the stalls, although non-existent, for as much as P500,000 so the P200,000 that we estimated earlier is just a conservative figure.”
The mayor said the city will take steps to stamp out these long-standing schemes of willful subleasing and selling their awarded stalls and adopt a foolproof system to manage the market.
He encouraged occupants who bought rights or are subleasing the spaces to file complaints to penalize those who enriched themselves at the expense of the property of the city assuring that they will be protected by the city government.
The ongoing purge of the illegal vendors and the adoption of the new management system is in line with the market redevelopment project currently being worked out under the public-private partnership scheme.
Regardless of who will win the bid, the city will continue to own and manage the market place, the mayor said, thus the purge is inevitable.
In the face of the complexities of the anomalies involving the stalls, there were suggestions at the city council to cancel all the leasehold rights and start from scratch which the mayor agreed to as one of the options for the city.
“But it will all depend on the final results of the inventory although we should also be fair to the legitimate vendors who are law-abiding,” he said.
Under the city’s market ordinance, the city can cancel the award of the stallholder who will be found to have sub-leased his or her awarded stall or those delinquent stallholders.
The vacated stalls are required to be subjected to public bidding wherein the person with the highest bid price based on the ceiling pegged by the city will be the one to be awarded the said stall.
For stalls that were vacated by delinquent stallholders, the minimum bid of interested individuals will be the accumulated unpaid rentals, including surcharges and interests. ** Aileen P. Refuerzo
