Lim orders reshuffle of market collectors after P23-million shortfall

Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim yesterday ordered the reshuffle of all the market collectors in the city after discovering that there had been millions worth of discrepancies in the collection from stallholders for the past year.

In a statement, Lim said he had already recommended to Acting City Treasurer Erlinda Marteja to enforce the reshuffling of the market collectors from the 31 city-run wet and dry markets by next week.

It was when Marteja conducted random inspections when the city government realized that there was an outstanding uncollected fees that amounted to P23 million. 

Marteja told Lim that there was failure on the part of the market collectors assigned to each public market to turn over copies of their collection reports, some (were) even in collusion with the market masters.”

The Manila City Hall collects a daily rental fee of P30 from a stallholder.

“Since we began conducting these spot checks, there has been a marked improvement in the daily collections, it has improved by 50 percent,” Marteja added.

With the discovery of this irregularity, the local government is now requiring the market officials to make daily collections, preferably in the morning, and to remit the collected amount in the afternoon.

Some of the establishments inspected were the Central, Pritil, Divisoria, Quiapo, San Andres, Paco and Dagonoy markets.

Marteja said she would conduct random check on the remaining 24 public markets in the following days to ensure their compliance.