VEGETABLE SUPPLY. Farmers load their farm produce into a truck that will transport vegetable supplies to Carbon Public Market in Cebu City. Mayor Edgardo Labella on Monday (July 27, 2020) ordered the "free flow" of vegetable products from the southern town of Dalaguete after the farmers complained about unsold farm produce due to strict quarantine checkpoints in the capital city. (Photo from Clarice Becher's Facebook page)
CEBU CITY – Mayor Edgardo Labella on Monday ordered the “free flow” of farm products from the southern town of Dalaguete, Cebu’s vegetable basket, to the Carbon Public Market in this capital city.
Lawyer Rey Gealon, Cebu City Hall legal officer and spokesperson, said in a virtual press briefing that the mayor's order came after receiving reports that volumes of vegetable goods from the southern municipality remain unsold due to lack of buyers and problems with border restrictions.
Gealon said even with the community quarantine in place, the flow of goods into the public market should remain unhampered based on the guidelines issued by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).
“Our city government isn’t restricting the entry of these vegetable products,” the official said in Cebuano.
Social media posts on Dalaguete farmers suffering from very low demand for their goods went viral, prompting calls to help them.
Traders or suppliers who encounter problems on quarantine checkpoints are asked to report the matters to the Market Administrator’s Office.
According to the Dalaguete Agricultural Pinoy Trading Center (DAPTC), vegetable growers from the municipality, home to about 8,000 vegetable farmers, used to depend on Carbon Market where about 80 percent of their produce used to be sold.
In response to the farmers’ plight, the provincial government here has also agreed to buy the excess supply of vegetables from Dalaguete and these would be delivered to the Cebu South Bus Terminal, the temporary “bagsakan” center of goods from the various towns and cities in the province.
A group of young residents in Dalaguete documented the situation of vegetable farmers in their town through a video, which later became viral.
“While the people in urban areas struggle to get fresh pricey vegetables, we literally throw them away,” a certain Zidkenu Burda said in a video caption, which gained sympathies from netizens. (PNA)
