Mayor’s obsession with $40 million seafood market

CIVIL SOCIETY must once again intervene in the process for the construction of a new seafood market in the coastal strip, an initiative that would cost the capital commune about $40 million, and whose citizen consultation to make it happen was a farce in order to try to justify the use of decentralization funds.

This time, the organizations are seeking to verify whether the transfer of 2.1 hectares of the coastal strip to the Mayor’s Office of Panama – destined for the project – complied with the application and administration procedure of three globs of land already granted by the Ministry of Economy and Finance for the construction site. The request is due to the questionable background of the current mayoral administration that, in search of concretizing some mega-work, rebounds against the adverse opinion of the inhabitants of the district.

The mayor insists on imposing initiatives that do not have the consensus of the city, precisely, like building a seafood market if there is already one. Faced with this, civil society does see with good eyes the construction of a network of peripheral markets, which would help reactivate the economies of several communities in this municipality. Why doesn’t the mayor welcome this good idea?