BAGUIO CITY – The local government will be funding the construction, upgrading and rehabilitation of satellite markets in the different parts of the city to help in efforts to decongest the influx of people to the city public market which is one of the major causes of monstrous traffic jams around the central business district area.
Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan said one of the priorities of the local government next year is for the upgrading and rehabilitation of existing satellite markets and the construction of other satellite markets in strategic areas in the different barangays of the city.
“We will pursue the rehabilitation and upgrading of existing satellite markets to be able to conform with prescribed standards and the put up of additional satellite markets in identified strategic barangays. We have to be aggressive on this matter so that we will be able to distribute the flow of market goers in the satellite markets instead of the people crowding in the public market daily,” Domogan stressed.
Councilor Leandro B. Yangot, Jr., chairman of the City Council Committee on Market, Trade, Commerce and Agriculture, said that the priority for upgrading and rehabilitation will be the satellite markets in Bayan Park and Gibraltar wherein the market structures will be improved to provide more spaces primarily intended for additional stalls and other amenities that will be offered to entice the public to patronize the satellite markets.
Further, Yangot added there will be 14 other satellite markets which will be rehabilitated and upgraded in strategic barangays to ensure that residents in adjacent barangays will be enticed to patronize the satellite markets instead of being inconvenienced by the overcrowding in the city’s public markets.
According to him, the primary purpose of improving the satellite markets around the city is to provide convenience to residents and visitors when buying their needs and lessen the daily congestion inside the public market in the central business district area.
Several proposals are pending before the local legislative body seeking for the appropriation of funds for the rehabilitation and upgrading of existing satellite markets which are already existing in the different barangays and for the construction of new satellite markets that will help in the decongestion efforts being done in the city public market and to allow the distribution of market goers to the barangays concerned.
The proposals for the appropriation of funds to rehabilitate, upgrade and construct satellite markets in the city had been referred by the concerned committee of the local legislative body to the local finance committee where it has been pending for quite sometime.
Yangot expressed confidence that with the assurance made by the local chief executive that funds will be made available for the noble project of improving and putting up added satellite markets around the city, the funds should be made available in next year’s budget so that the overall efforts of the local government to decongest the public market will be realized in the coming years for the benefit of the public who had been longing for convenience when going to the market to purchase their basic needs.
By Dexter A. See
