Sexy vendors sell OTOP products to bus passengers

Mario L. Cuezon
March 6, 2008


On a hot day, buy milk!

It was a sleepy humid morning in a small terminal with colored seats in the agora of Jimenez town, the second oldest in Misamis Occidental of region 10-Northern Mindanao but at the northern tip of Zamboanga peninsula. There were a few passengers waiting for buses or vans to take them to Ozamiz or probably Pagadian, capital of Zamboanga del Sur or probably to far Iligan or Cagayan de Oro or Oroquieta or probably Dipolog, capital of Zamboanga del Norte.
Two women in their 30s were sitting near tables with small ice chests and dainty baskets with plastic bottles inside and hanging in its sides are packs of cookies and patatas. The bottles contained fresh milk and chocolate milk. The women wore t-shirts, long pants and sandals. One wore a t-shirt emblazoned in front with the picture of an old church and a black sombrero.
When a bus arrived and parked for a few minutes, the two women stood up and with their plastic baskets, came near the windows and door, calling out for buyers. One came up and announced, “Good morning, we are selling milk from the town’s municipal dairy farm.”
A woman near the door called out and selected what to buy, and handed her the payment. The peddler hurriedly took some money from her pocket to give the change. The bus started and she called out to the driver to wait for a few seconds. She went down and returned to her seat. One of the women, announced she will be having lunch. The other one agreed to a short interview while no bus or van is around.
She was a round-faced woman with a pleasant smile that makes one comfortable. Her skin is even dark brown, the kind one would associate with those of Hindu or Indian blood. When her smile came full circle, it revealed white teeth that could be put to good use to advertise a toothpaste brand. Her name is Maria Elvira Gamonez-Rebuya but she sports the nickname, Pinky, for which she had been known in this town of 25,000 residents, for more than three decades. She is 35 years old, married with three children, aged 13, 11 and four months old. A graduate of a one year computer course in Misamis University, she had been on the job for more than a month. Her husband, who is suffering from a stone in his gall bladder stays at home and watches over their videoke bar which is opened mostly at night in a town that is basically dependent on the coconut industry, the government, some businesses and perhaps its share of Overseas Filipino Workers.
She had to leave her infant to the care of her husband so she can get a job that pays her P120 a day from Monday to Sunday, if she does not want to rest. Normally, though she and other peddlers, rest on Saturday or Sunday to wash clothes and rest.
She had heard of the vacancy from friends manning the Jimenez Pasalubong Display Center. This was when the center’s overseer transferred to the Department of Education so one of the peddlers had to be reassigned to the center. Thus a vacancy for peddlers was created. She applied to the mayor, a 50ish lanky former businessman, Ranulfo B. Limquimbo, whose father had been a successful copra and charcoal trader before becoming a mayor himself after the EDSA revolution.
Pinky says the job is not that easy. While the basket is small, it becomes heavy after carrying it for sometime. She says her feet tires of climbing up and down buses. Sometimes, the buses start up and still they are not finished selling or giving change to clients. It is also hot and they have to wear hats for protection. As incentive so they will really work hard to have more sales, she gets 10% commission for her sales. When sales are not brisk, she sells P300 worth of goods at the end of the day. But there are times, when it is hot, she can earn more.
So in a way, she actually earns a little bit more than the municipal employees forever in the shade of their offices.
Her colleague, Cielo Pacas-Sabacahan, in an earlier interview said that because of the heat, they have to wear sweet shirts and colorful stylish hats. Some bus drivers taunted her that the milk they are selling are surely sweet and nutritious as the beautiful bodies of the peddlers show. Or sometimes, bus drivers bargain for lower prices. To which she gamely answered that they can get bargain prices if they suckle from the cows themselves.

OTOP peddlers

Pinky may not know it but she is the only government-paid ambulant peddler hawking products of the government’s One Town One Product (OTOP) program. Well, she and her fellow peddler, Cielo Pacas-Sabacahan and the replacement for times one is absent or on day off.
Nothing ordinary?
They are not vendors who come in dirty clothes. The ambulant vendors are well-dressed like promo girls of shampoos or noodles, sometimes in colorful tee-shirts featuring the town’s Spanish era church.
Not vendors who are blackened by years of selling under the hot sun and who had not had any chance to study.
They could probably be the sexiest peddlers in Misamis Occidental and they are not peddling sex. The other vendor, Pacas-Sabacahan, who is absent to take care of a sick child, holds a four year degree course, Bachelor of Science in Commerce. And so was the one whom Pinky replaced, Eldemelia Sitoy, who is a Commerce graduate.
Not vendors with nigo (winnower) of junk foods and soft drinks. They carry small plastic bags with packed cookies, durian polvoron, durian yema and bottles of fresh or chocolate milk, all produced by food processors of this town with 24 barangays. The town’s OTOP is processed foods which includes numerous delicacies topped by torta, suman and cookies which are served and given as “bringhaws” (literally bring house or pasalubong) during poblacion and barangay fiestas.
OTOP is a priority program of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo which aims to awaken pride of place at the same time, to create new businesses and employ more people. It is being handled by the Department of Trade and Industry, where GMA was an undersecretary before she entered politics.



No History of Peddlers

The presence of these ambulant peddlers is a new phenomenon in this town, which also hosts a factory producing crude coconut oil and copra cake and two oil depots of Petron and Shell. Petron also fills and refills liquified petroleum gas tanks here. The town is also known for its old Spanish era-church and old buildings some of whom figure prominently in Philippine history.
This town which is the second oldest in the province after Ozamiz (formerly Misamis) never had known ambulant peddlers before in its more than 200 years of history.
This is because there was not one permanent terminal for the passenger trucks before. Passengers flag vehicles passing along the length of the town’s poblacion lined with old houses, some of which are historical, with one visited by all presidents of the republic and another printing the country’s emergency money during World War II.The terminals in the 70s and 80s were far apart and there were no vendors like in the terminals of Oroquieta, Ozamiz, Tangub, Bonifacio and Calamba. Even when the integrated bus terminal was set up in the agora in the 1990s, no one sold foods by the winnowers or baskets to the passengers. By this time, passenger trucks need not enter the town’s poblacion as a diversion road was created.
The absence of food peddlers was discussed late last year by three members of High School 70s, a SEC-registered association of residents in the 1970s which include the present mayor, Ranulfo B. Limquimbo. The three discussants happened to be kins : Mario L. Cuezon, Dete Lusica-Acosta and Marilyn Quimbo-Medes. Cuezon and Acosta were employees of the Department of Trade and Industry-Misamis Occidental. Cuezon is assigned to processed foods sector in Jimenez. Acosta is co-head of the Tourism Association of the town which started to popularize the Sakay-Sakay Festival some two years ago. Medez is the mayor’s sister and his private secretary. They were then discussing a prophetic solution to marketing problems.
Peddling was not a tradition in the town. But it became a must to sell its products.

The Sexiest Peddlers in the Province

Rio P. Lagaac heads the Jimenez Municipal Economic Enterprises Development Office (JMEEDO) which groups the town’s income generating projects, including the Pasalubong Display Center which is technically under the Jimenez Municipal Nursery under Vima Macalisang-Bolanio. Lagaac said that Bolanio approached her about the problem of how to market milk more aggressively. Because of marketing problems, some of their milk are not sold. This was the reason, they made milk bath soap. But they wanted to sell more, so they set up the pasalubong center. Even then, more agressive marketing approaches had to be made.
But the problem was who will be selling the products?
Lagaac said that he went around the market talking to people about the vacancies for peddlers. No one applied. He said it is not in the culture of even the poor in or near agora to peddle wares. He also asked Bolanio to find peddlers but she could not find any. So he ordered two of her market collectors to sell the products. Sabacahan and Sitoy were the most unlikely candidates for peddlers. They were among the sexiest and most beautiful of the JMEEDO staffers. Sabacahan is a morena with pretty features. Sitoy had fair complexion that could be mistaken as that of a Chinese mestiza. And they dress well. And they were college degree holders. They thought it was below them to sell food products, even if it includes the town’s best.
To make them accede, Lagaac told them, if you do not want to follow, I will terminate you.He was bluffing though but he thought of getting peddlers so the two would have to be reassigned by mayor to other offices.
So last January 2, 2008, peddling in the terminal was born.
The first two peddlers could probably the province’s sexiest, most beautiful and most educated peddlers ever at that historical point in time.
Prior to that, Lagaac noted that though buses of Rural Transit actually enter the terminal in the agora, they really do not stop over for a few minutes, if there are no passengers. There was an existing resolution by the town council made a “long time ago” that buses should stop over for a few minutes. But it was not implemented. Now, he thought, is the time to implement it, to promote the town’s products.
Lagaac revealed that the bus company is paying P3,500 a month for the big buses to be able to get passengers at the Jimenez terminal. The small buses have to pay P10 a day while vans shell out P12 to get passengers here.

Rural Transit Manager Says Okay

He wrote the Rural Transit Mindanao Inc to ask their drivers to stop for a while. The branch manager, Engineer Ramon T. Valencia, based at Bulua, Cagayan de Oro, visited the town sometime in February to see why they have to stop. Lagaac told him they want to sell their products. Valencia agreed to order their bus drivers for a stop over for a few minutes. The JMEEDO provided plastic chairs for passengers until the bus company sent strong steel chairs.
The first two peddlers complained to friends. They studied for four years in college only to end up as milk peddlers. Sitoy complained of breast pains because of an operation. Sabacahan had fever after exposure to the heat in the first week. Then there were talks by envious staffers of their “high” commissions.
But the work of the first two led to higher sales. The center grossed P40,000 last January 2008, several times higher than the December sales. The sales figure was even higher than that of the pasalubong shoppe at the Misamis Occidental Aqua Marine Park at nearby Sinacaban, the province’s number one beach resort and tourist attraction.
Lagaac is satisfied with the results. But he is all out in supporting the peddlers, identified as sales clerk in the payroll. He gave them one t-shirt each and asked male employees to help them carry their load to and from the center. If one is absent, he pulls out meter readers of the waterworks system to substitute as peddler. He clarified however that he only sees to it that there are employees posted in the terminal. The job of supervising the peddlers is left to Bolanio.





The Products They are Selling

The products they are selling may not be the kind that fills to overflowing the shelves of groceries, but they are not something to reckon, even if placed side by side with the province’s or the region’s best.
The cow’s milk not only comes in fresh or as chocolate milk or its variation, chocolate milk ice candy at five pesos for school children. There are other products made out of milk: milk bath soap, maja blanca, chocolate maja blanca. And from the nursery’s fruit trees, they have produced durian polvoron, durian yema and during harvest season, durian candy, durian jam, jackfruit candies.
The nursery also sells seedlings of grafted durian, rambutan, lanzones, cloned calamansi, ornamentals and fruits. When the provincial Gender and Development office started experimenting on bottled rambutan, rambutan from Jimenez were among the prized products. Fruits from farmers had actually decreased the prices of these fruits here in this town.
While the nursery had its own share of prizewinning delicacies, private enterpreneurs also produce numerous delicacies worth everyone’s purse and palates.
Marietta Ozamiz, the wife of former Congressman Julio (son of World War II martyr and the province’s first governor, congressman and only senator, Jose Ozamiz) is manufacturing the recipes of her auntie-in-law, Fe Consuelo, ex-town councilor. Their guava jam, guava jelly, mango jelly and mangosteen jam come in bottles with colorful labels and clear seals that can have a place in grocery shelves. They are marketed also in grocery stores in Manila and are even brought abroad as pasalubong treats.
There are also cookies from Eurlyn Serino, patatas from Merlyn Maghuyop-Corpuz and from Elna Putis-Agustin, banana chips from Vima Bolanio (yes, the nursery manager), otap from Magadan’s Bakery. Micro-enterpreneurs come to display various home-made delicacies like gollorias, torta, cakes, polvoron with pinipig, chocolates, peanut butter, and many others. The High School 70s, an association of decade batch mates, is selling t-shirts featuring the old church.

JMEEDO

If the pasalubong center is earning some dough, the mother unit, the JMEEDO is doing fine too, Lagaac said. In January 2008 alone, JMEEDO earned P1,311,685.40. Of course, this seems to be the year’s highest as January is the time when businesses pay their licenses and other fees.
But what is JMEEDO?
“It is a government entity run like a business. Under it, you produce results!” Lagaac declared.
It is the local government unit’s earning arm. Under JMEEDO, are the town’s income generating divisions or offices –like the waterworks system, market, slaughterhouse, cemetery and nursery (which includes the pasalubong center and peddlers). Lagaac said that the motor pool which also earns some income used to be part of JMEEDO but problems with recording had forced him to drop it as an earning unit.
Last year, JMEEDO earned P7.4 M. About P6 M is earned from taxes. On top of that is the P30 M internal revenue allotment (IRA) from the national government. IRA is the share of the taxes paid by the residents. The barangays also get their share of the IRA such that there are rich and poor barangays, IRA-wise.

Source of JMEEDO Idea

But where did they get the idea of forming a JMEEDO?
He said that they got the idea from Naawan in Misamis Oriental, way back in 2004. At that time, the Naawan MEEDO had already been in place for a year. Naawan’s municipal economic enterprise development office grouped income generating offices like the market, slaughterhouse, cemetery and goat raising project which produces goat’s milk and goat’s milk soap.
Naawan, however, had a smaller economy than Jimenez, Lagaac qualified.` Its market collection then was only P300,000 a year. About two to three pigs are killed in their slaughterhouse every day. Compare that to one cow and about four pigs killed every day in the Jimenez slaughterhouse every day.
The MEEDO idea of Naawan was already considered a best practice.
On October 29, 2004 Mayor Limquimbo joined a lakbay-aral to Naawan. Impressed by what he saw, he ordered an exploration on his town’s economic enterprises. The study took about a year. On August 3, 2005 he called a meeting for a plan of action to create JMEEDO. It was attended by Lagaac (admin officer IV then), Maria Lourdes A. Econ (budget officer), Ellen U. Peralta (accountant), Nomar Chiong (SB committee on finance), Walter Talibong (municipal engineer), Lilia Bhagwani (DILG officer), and Tita Sumalinog (treasurer).
On September 12, 2005, Mayor issued an EO creating the JMEEDO technical working group. It was this group which attended the workshop last September 14-16, 2005. Representatives from Jimenez LGU, Oroquieta City (capital of Mis. Occ.) and Balingasag, Misamis Oriental attended the workshop. But Balingasag and Oroquieta were not able to implement their MEEDO. In Oroquieta, the mayor and the sangguniang panglungsod were at odds against each other so the MEEDO did not push through. Mayor Limquimbo immediately set his people to work on creating the JMEEDO.
On September 28, 2005 a resource scanning and diagnostic audit team by the technical working group confirmed the need for a JMEEDO.
On October 14, 2005, the Sangguniang Bayan approved Municipal Ordinance No. 3 of 2005 creating the JMEEDO.
And voila! On January 2006, the JMEEDO was born!
Of course with a lot of birth pangs. It was the first MEEDO in Misamis Occidental ! The provincial government under Governor Leo Ocampos followed suit with its Provincial Economic Enterprise Development Office grouping under it the Misamis Occidental Aqua Marine Project, Gender and Development office and the drug rehabilitation center.





The Results?

Lagaac said that there was a dramatic rise in the income of the various offices under him. Because of more income, they were able to hire more people. He said that JMEEDO is the source of money used in paying the LGU staff. Last year, the salaries and wages of casuals and contractuals cost P1.6 M while those of regular staff was P2.3 M. All that came from JMEEDO earnings.
“Sa JMEEDO, way lugi,” he added. (In JMEEDO, there are no loses.)
Before the system was set up, some of waterworks clients had not paid for five to six years because the staff won’t cut off the lines of those who don’t pay on time. Before, the delinquences in water and market users was P500,000. Now, with JMEEDO, the arrears was reduced to P57,542.78.

Not Perfect Yet

But the system, based on the arrears is not perfect. Yet.
He admits that he even needs to see the financial statements on the dairy farm and processed foods. He only gets to see the net sales reflected on the JMEEDO records. He had asked Bolanio to present the breakdown of costs and expenses. But in that respect, he also needs the figures of the dairy farm manager, Juvy Palanas or municipal agriculturist, Rodrigo Simbajon. The dairy farm was given P500,000 by Philippine Australia Livelihood Support (PALS) to buy cows from the National Dairy Authority.
And there is the problem of the motor pool whose records are problematic such that it was dropped off as an income earner.
Much of their infrastructure needs some repair or rehabilitation or construction.

Plans for Development

The waterworks need P30 M for more new pipes for new areas or to replace old ones. Even one section of the agora had no running pipeline cutting across it such that businesspeople in this street used water pumps. They are looking for funding agencies where they can get funds for water rehabilitation. But they have also socialized the fees of water users. Homeowners pay at lower rates while commercial establishments pay more.
The agora’s high tank, for instance, needed a generator to pump water up.Once the tank already has water, he can start work on the conversion of a second floor structure in the terminal into a lodging house. The area has three rooms which can then be equipped with double decks and rented out to lodgers at P100 a day. Work on this will start by April first week.
“Sales agents will use the lodging house,” he said. “They like the place because it is very peaceful. The agora is guarded 24 hours a day.” He added.
The vegetable section of the agora also needs a building to house it. As of now, the vegetable vendors occupy small stalls with no water, which is vital to keep vegetables fresh and clean.
Lagaac said that once that building is made, he will transfer the tricycle terminal there. The present tricycle terminal can then be set aside for a mall.
He also said that JMEEDO also plans to involve itself in the fresh fish business with the construction of a refrigeration building. As of now, complaints are heard from consumers who say that prices of fresh meat and fish here is higher compared to Ozamiz and Oroquieta cities.
They also plan a building for farmers to be able to make use of modern technology including the internet highway. Funds are already set for that by Congressman Clarete. The building will be placed in the old market site which will also become a park, with a pond for banca rowing, thanks to a natural spring in the area. The old stalls will also give way to a function hall.
There are also plans to buy 10 hectares of land for a memorial park or the modern cemetery somewhere near San Isidro. The old municipal cemetery is already so full so he had “apartments” constructed. But in the future, they would need a bigger site as people die, naturally. But they have a problem finding a ten hectare lot.
“We will probably expropriate that area,” he explained. “Like the expropriation we did to get lands to make the agora and the nursery-public high school.”
There were owners who filed a case on the agora conversion. The case went on while the ricefields were being filled with boulders or land. In the case of the nursery lot, the heirs of the Ozamiz family, the Mendesonas based in Cebu, would not want to part with the land at first. But the government had its way and the land was paid and turned into a nursery. Later, half of it was turned into a public high school.

Good Morning!

Despite the numerous problems associated with the running of JMEEDO, Lagaac is optimistic about the present set-up. Before this posting, he was the personnel officer of the LGU so he is quite familiar with the plus and minus factors of running municipal employees. Before, he holds office in a small office with about two or three tables near the office of the mayor. Now, he lords a small airconditioned office, manned mostly by waterworks employees who receive payments or read water meters. His office is in the first floor of a small two story building. It is rectangular in shape, rather long but it is airconditioned. The rest of the first story is occupied by two comfort rooms while the upper story is occupied by the market supervisor’s office and staff and radio offices. Outside, the heat sears the soul. In this part of the agora, trees are not planted. Other parts of the agora are rather green with indian trees, talisays and mahoganies swaying to the light breeze.
One hundred meters away from his office are the terminals. The tricycle terminal is near the pasalubong center. Some steps from it is the terminal for vehicles for Ozamiz or Oroquieta. In a part of this terminal are the two tables of JMEEDO sales clerks a.k,a, peddlers or vendors, with stylish hats, colorful shirts, dainty plastic bags with packs of cookies and patatas, and bottles of fresh and chocolate milks.
A bus parks and Pinky stood up with her food wares and approaches the vehicle. She climbed up the bus and called out to passengers, “Good morning, we are offering Jimenez’s best, our fresh and chocolate milk...”