Group 1

Daffon, Phoenex V.
Sanico, Tripon
Vinculado, Stephanie Claire V.

Introduction
Informal activities are important for numerous reasons. From a societal standpoint, informal employees
lack social safety and insurance, which may harm their economic prospects and have wider implications
for inequality and poverty. Informality also has an impact on labour market outcomes, productivity, and
growth, albeit the overall effect is unknown (Andrews et al, 2011). The Philippines is one of the countries
with large informal activities. Blunch et al. (2001) states that the informal sector in the Philippines
absorbs 66.9% of employment. Meanwhile, in other Asian countries, the contribution of this sector to
employment ranges between 77.9% in Indonesia, 67.1% in Pakistan, 51.4% in Thailand, and 73.7% in
India. Informal activities, hence, have become an epidemic not just in the Philippines but anywhere or far
and wide across Asia.
The informal sector, which primarily consists of street vending, is critical to income generating, job
creation, and production (Recchi, 2020). It is a source of livelihood for many people globally. Street
vending is one of the most innovative ways to do business. With an informal business, vendors can
support their families and pay for their kids’ education.
Recently, street vending offers many advantages for cities restarting after COVID-19 shutdowns.
For starters, it can alleviate some of the economic impact of the pandemic. Second, it is more easily
structured to induce social distancing than the internal areas of congested commercial malls. These
behaviors expand the possibilities for street commerce (Short, 2020). Street vendors make cities livelier,
safer, and fairer. Promoting street vending may create jobs, keep people safe, and foster the liveliness and
comity that characterizes thriving, humane cities.
Ormoc City, one of the cities in Region VIII, is a beautiful city in the Western part of Leyte. It is
a place where individuals from all walks of life can freely roam, work in harmony, and live in peace.

Street vendors, moreover, are becoming popular in the city as they provide a less conspicuous
mode of selling goods than traditional storefront retail, however, the proliferation of street vending has
been greatly debated, with some arguing that it represents an important aspect of modern life, while
others argue that it is a threat to cities' aesthetics and negatively affects the quality of urban life. Street
vending also creates issues for pedestrians, formal retailers, residents, and public authorities. In line with
this, vendors face many problems as they are a vulnerable population, who are neither protected by the
government, NGOs, labor unions nor by any labor law.
Additionally, street vending raises the tension between the individual right to work and the collective
right to public space. In most nations, public space is regarded as a collective good to which all citizens
have a right, and it is the responsibility of local governments to manage its use so that those collective
rights can be exercised. Opponents of street vendors argue that those collective rights are violated when
street vendors appropriate public space for their use. In this view, governments must defend public space
from such encroachments by strictly regulating street vending.
Sidewalk vendors are a necessary part of the public sphere. This sector contributes to the
economic vitality of the city. It is indeed important to know how they function at the Ormoc City Public
Market, their attitude towards the regulation of the Local Government Unit, and how the LGU protects
their rights against discrimination.