Your price coordinating council

Egay Uy

THE Cagayan de Oro City Price Coordinating Council, a creation of Mayor Oscar S. Moreno through Executive Order No. 089-2014, recently held several consumer rights awareness sessions in eight venues all over the city.

Sessions were held in barangays Tignapoloan, Tumpagon, Lumbia, Macabalan, Puerto, and Barangays 14, 24, and 40, which were attended by a total of some 1,000 barangay constituents.

The project was jointly undertaken with the Department of Trade and Industry Provincial Office, through its Director, Ma. Eliza Pabillore, and its active staff Almer Marsillones and Roxy San Juan.

The sessions focused on the rights and obligations of consumers, aside from introducing to the communities the CDO-CPCC and its functions.  Nestor Banuag of Xavier University facilitated most of the workshops which elicited valuable feedback direct from consumers themselves.

As a result, a draft city ordinance was submitted to the city council through the committee on trade and commerce of councilor George Goking who has been consistently supportive of the programs of the CDO-CPCC.

The proposed ordinance aims to establish Consumer Welfare Officers in each barangay in the city so that concerns raised by consumers in the barangays could be attended to immediately without them going to government offices which entails spending time and money.

The CDO-CPCC is chaired by Mayor Moreno with me as co-chairman and Director Pabillore as vice chairman.  Among its members are a consumers group, the press club, XU, social action center of the archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro represented by Jose Astrid Bana, the Cocpo, a transport group, agricultural productivity office of Hector San Juan, the city legal office represented by Tonton Resma, and the city council committee on trade and commerce.

Aside from the consumer education campaign, the CDO-CPCC has also conducted inspections of retail prices in several grocery outlets during the period when prices of prime commodities and basic necessities were frozen because of the declaration of Martial Law months back. There was a general compliance with the frozen prices then.

Earlier, DTI Secretary Lopez came to the city and conducted an inspection, together with the DTI and the CDO-CPCC, of the warehouses of distributors of prime commodities and basic necessities and found that supply then was at normal levels.  There was also no spike in the volume of sales which could denote hoarding on the part of buyers.

The council also witnessed the inspection conducted by the DTI of Christmas lights sold in various retail outlets to ensure that buyers pay for the right quality of products.  So far, there was no finding of any violation of product standard regulations.

That, my friends, is your CDO City Price Coordinating Council.

(Egay Uy is a lawyer and chairman o the city’s Task Force Hapsay Dalan.)