By Mae Singuay

The Bacolod City Legal Office (CLO) reminds vendors in three major markets in the city to immediately settle their arrears with the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) to avoid displacement from their stalls.

This, after the CLO decided not to grant the request of the Burgos Market Fish Vendors’ Association for a three-month arrears deadline extension.

CLO head Romeo Carlos Ting, Jr. said he is waiting for the CTO’s list of vendors at the Burgos Market who failed to settle their arrears following the deadline yesterday.

“We have no choice. We have to remove them because if we will not comply what is stipulated in the notice, this will serve as precedence to other vendors with pending accounts like in Libertad and Central [Markets],” Ting said.

He said, as of Tuesday, January 30, some have yet to settle their accounts.

The CLO head said none of them went to his office to make another appeal.

He hopes that all of them have already settled their payments so that nobody will be displaced.

Meanwhile, during his press conference on Tuesday, Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez said he would issue an executive order to create a task force for the displaced vendors.

Benitez said they will conduct a profiling to see whether the vendors are capable of starting a business./MS, WDJ