REGISTRATION OF VEGETABLE STAKEHOLDERS TO AVOID ‘FAKE BUYERS’

December 16, 2023 Environment Provincial

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet

Vegetable stakeholders in this capital town will be required to register with the municipal government starting the first quarter of 2024, as mandated by a local ordinance approved this month. “All stakeholders are required to register so that there will be an official listing of the persons working at the trading posts, allowing the local government unit to determine the identity and addresses of persons,” Councilor Bartolome Baldas, chair of the Committee on Markets and Local Economic Enterprise, said in an interview on Thursday on the sidelines of the 5th Legislative Week celebration here.

Baldas said farmers, the usual victims in the vegetable trading, have complained of being paid with bouncing cheques by the “purchasers” using checks of “buyers” whose identities and whereabouts are unknown. He explained that in the vegetable trading system, the buyers are represented by
purchasers who use cheques of the “principal” or the “buyer” which are later found to be unfunded, leaving the farmers high and dry. As a private practicing lawyer before joining the local government and as an appointed legal officer at the office of the city mayor, Baldas said he used to be consulted by farmers.

“We received a lot of complaints so we sat with the stakeholders who suggested the accreditation and registration of people involved in the vegetable trading at the different trading facilities so that the real identity of people will be known (and) not leaving victims empty-handed, not even knowing the real name of the person they are dealing with involving thousands of pesos,” he said. Baldas also said that as an offshoot of the newly passed ordinance, a subsequent one requiring that an official transaction receipt, not a small pad paper nor a tissue paper, will be mandatory as proof of the transaction. “This subsequent proposal has already passed the second reading, and we hope it is approved before the end of the year to supplement the ordinance requiring the accreditation of the
stakeholders,” he said.

Liza Agoot/PNA