BAGUIO CITY – The chairman of the City Council Committee on Market, Trade, Commerce and Agriculture is pushing for the immediate realization of the planned construction of new and renovation of existing satellite markets in the different barangays to help decongest the central business district area and the public market from the influx of the people.
Councilor Leandro B. Yangot, Jr., chairman of the committee, said that it is important for the next administration to pursue the proposed rehabilitation and upgrading of existing satellite markets and the construction of new satellite markets to ensure that residents from the city’s barangays will not converge in the central business district area and the public market just to purchase their basic needs in their homes.
“We have to make sure that basic goods are available to our people in strategic areas around the city so that people will not be forced to converge in the central business district just to purchase their basic needs in their homes. We have to ensure people will not be forced to converge in the city proper because it is the root cause of our major problems on traffic among other major concerns,” Councilor Yangot stressed.
He pointed out that the operation of satellite markets in some barangays in the city turned out to be successful as numerous interested stallholders petitioned the local government to facilitate the expansion of the satellite markets that were built to allow them to be accommodated and for business activities to be brought to the barangays instead of being concentrated in the central business district area.
Initially, the local government programmed the rehabilitation and upgrading of some 14 satellite markets in the different parts of the city to significantly improve the situation of the public facilities and partly address the congestions in the main public market as people in the barangays will no longer have to go to the city proper just to get their basic needs.
Some of the barangays hosting a satellite market petitioned the local government to work out the rehabilitation and upgrading of the established public facilities within their areas of jurisdiction to make the stalls up to standard.
The alderman stipulated there are available spaces in some barangays suitable for building satellite markets, thus, the barangays must start identifying the vacant spaces for public needs to prevent the same from being intruded by informal settlers, and subsequently, request the local government to bankroll the construction of the said public facility.
The local legislator enticed businessmen to invest in the stalls in the different satellite markets to make the operation of the public facilities viable and feasible to help entice more people to patronize the existing satellite market facilities instead of having to work their way to the public markets at the central business district just to purchase their basic needs from establishments considering that the quality of products in the satellite markets are at par or even better than those in the public market. By Dexter A. See
