Sidewalk Vendors

I am not in full favor of the MMDA actions against the sidewalk vendors especially those who really strive to have even a small capital for a small business. I mean, these are people we are talking about. People who try to live as normal as they could in the midst of an economical crisis. How on earth should they pay for space rent if their income is not even close to buy a decent meal? Whose fingernails must they harvest the money to apply for a business permit? Which hand of their ancestors must they dig to start a real life? And MMDA has been very brutal to them. Destroying everything not theirs.

Who!? Who had been complaining about these vendors? Who? I've heard no one, nobody complaining about them. In fact, students and ordinary people, who had been MMDA's reason for clearing the ways, had been unconsciously supporting these vendors by purchasing their goods. If there is any complainant, why not present them to the public as well? Oh yeah, it is the MMDA's authority to clean up the streets and roads of these vendors. And brutally destroy their source of living? Oh come on!

Just scare them away. Tell them to go. Have them leave the site on that very instant. But not destroy or take their goods away. Don't make them hate the government more than they hate it already. Educate them. Inform them. Help them understand. Oh yes they know. They know it's illegal to vend on sidewalks. But in a country like ours, where jobless people to low income earners compose the majority of our population, sidewalk vending is really expected.

I know, I know. MMDA would say they have given all the warnings, time, cautions, letters, threats, whatever to these vendors yet they keep on coming back. Still, I think the government must think of another way of dealing with these vendors.



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