BAGUIO CITY – Concerned market group leaders and vendors criticized the alleged lack of transparency in the conduct of the negotiations between the local government and an anointed developer for the proposed multi-billion market development plan.
Sources, who opted not to divulge their identity for personal and security reasons, claimed that if the local government is really transparent in all transactions, then it should have easily scrapped the condition on the mandatory signing of a confidentiality agreement with the Developer that was issued the Original Proponent Status (OPS) even if the same was enshrined in the Private Public Partnership for the People ordinance as the same is not aligned with the supposed policy of the present administration on god governance.
Further, the source argued that the highly publicize pronouncement by city officials that the market development will serve as a legacy project of the proponent to negate the bad perception of the proponent for its involvement in the controversial cutting of trees within its property is part of the ongoing mind conditioning that is being done to make the project appear good in the view of the people.
According to the source, there are still numerous issues that should be discussed in the proposed terms of reference for the project but there are already city officials who are trying to make it appear that the negotiations are already completed which is contrary to the reality that is why the market vendors are now working on their parallel moves to question the obvious desire of the local government to allegedly railroad the project.
The source claimed that in the financial terms, it seems that the local government is allegedly trying to give away the market project to the developer as the agreed lease period is 50 years which is already close to a lifetime that will deprive future leaders on the better option that should be taken to ensure the acceptability of the market development project.
Another source also questioned the repeated public pronouncement of some city officials that the negotiations on the terms of reference are coming to a close when there are still various issues that are pending deliberations by the concerned parties which might be considered a violation of the non disclosure agreement as it is obvious that the local government only wants to publicize what is to its greater advantage over other pending controversial issues confronting the project.
Earlier, the various market cooperatives disclosed their desire to participate in the upcoming Swiss challenge that is part of the public private partnership project process while working on other parallel moves because they want that it should be the local developers that should implement the project to prevent the public market from being converted into a mall-type structure that will cause the displacement of the over 90 percent of micro, small and medium enterprises that are occupying the market stalls.
The consortium of market cooperatives, together with the support of other cooperatives, are reportedly financially capable of raising the needed amount to be able to pursue a better state of the market instead of the same being given away by the local government to a giant mall developer that will displaced bonafide residents from doing their business activities.