The Street Vendors are Back
I wrote about how Cagayan de Oro Mayor Tinnex Jaraula was clearing out the street vendors, but they’re back.
Just before passing this scene I passed five uniformed PNP officers. Perhaps they were discussing taking some action against the street vendors.
I have noticed that over the past couple of weeks the street vendors have made a come-back. Mostly, as you can see here, they now are using wheeled carts (“cariton” in Visayan) rather than stationary tables.
The wheeled carts make for easy removal if the PNP do go into action. I think this is a sign of the innovative resilience of Filipinos.
The best vendors are inside the market. The street vendors often have their scales purposely off, so that if you ask for 3 kilos of something, their scales will register 3 kilos, but you’ll only get 2 kilos. Sometimes plainclothes police will buy from the street vendors and then weigh the product on an accurate scale, and if the product does not weigh out, they’ll arrest the vendor. Perhaps this method would be a more effective tactic to get the street vendors off the street.
The grudge I have against the street vendors is that they occupy the parking spaces, leaving no place to park, and they slow traffic through the area, and cause pedestrians to walk in the streets, when they should be on the sidewalks.
November 1st, 2007 at 14:18
That’s a funny thing, actually. Sidewalks’re virtually nonexistent in the country. If the street vendors aren’t occupying the walking space, it’d be the homeowner, or the building tennants. A Manila resident owns five sedans, and enough garage space for two. The rest of the lot take up sidewalk space and street space on a one-lane street.