Half of illegal vendors removed

Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando has reported significant progress in his four-month-old campaign to clear streets and sidewalks from obstructions, saying he had so far removed around half of the city’s 18,000 illegal vendors.

Before the campaign began in June, sidewalk vendors, squatters and illegally parked cars had colonized 90 percent of public roads in the metropolis, he told a Foreign Correspondents Association press briefing the other day.

Fernando, who goes around with armed bodyguards and himself carries a gun for his own protection, has used hardline methods to clear up streets and sidewalks, even threatening to pour kerosene on the merchandise of illegal vendors.

"Our problem actually is we have so many roads, but we are only using 10 percent of them to carry most of the traffic," he said. "If the government can reclaim another 10 percent of the roads to use, that will ease up our traffic."

He said Metro Manila has 80 percent of the country’s registered vehicles and about 5,000 kilometers of roads.

However, thousands of illegal vendors have colonized the sidewalks of principal avenues, while residents have actually "closed off" certain secondary streets, using them as basketball courts, erecting squatter shanties, or using most of the pavement to park their cars illegally.

The MMDA does not have its own estimates for man-hours lost each year due to the perennial traffic gridlocks, but Fernando said he has heard figures of "up to P40 billion."

Metro Manila accounts for about a third of the country’s economic output and nearly 14 percent of the population.

He said around 18,000 vendors were illegally occupying sidewalks when the campaign started, but that "just 50 percent are left on the roadsides." – AFP