By: Tatiana Balvin
The Undersecretariat for Public Space went from having 600 employees to 252 in the current administration, the reduction is due, according to Wilson Buitrago, head of this agency, to the fact that the service policy changed. “In previous governments it was more of a shock issue, with unworthy contracts, it seemed more like a kind of informal police, now it’s different.”
This scenario worries formal businesses, since they see the lack of investment in personnel as a lack of concern for public space: “In the Quintero administration there have been 30 or 40 people regulating public space in the city. This demonstrates the lack of interest in organizing it and is an example of the lack of protection for formal businessmen who pay taxes” says Jorge Mario Puerta, executive director of Corpocentro.
In the ten critical points of the public space identified in the center of Medellín there are 140 officials of the Undersecretariat among coordinators, social, operational and regulators. The main mission is to keep the spaces tidy and verify the products offered.
The lack of personnel, merchants fear, could have an effect on security: “There can be no control of public space when the undersecretary has practically no staff and the one that does have it symbolically. And now with the closures it is worse, we want to alert the control centers because this can make security worse in places where this issue is already very critical ” says Daniel Manzano, executive director of Asoguayaquil.
What also generates controversy with other economic sectors is the “formal permission management”. In 2023, a thousand have already been delivered and another thousand will be regularized in the coming days, 400 of these in the center.
“For the last three years, politics has been carried out with that position and, in addition, too many taxes have been given to informal vendors, the necessary control has not really been carried out,” says the Director of Corpocentro in this regard.
In the same sense, Manzano from Asoguayaquil adds: “there is a disorder and an improvisation in that delivery that makes us practically nervous, and it is precisely very conjunctural because the elections are approaching. For us this is very dangerous because public space can be exchanged for votes”.
The administration defends itself and names this scenario as necessary for the social dynamics of the center.
“It is not about anything illegal, we have a regulatory framework or legal floor that empowers us to deliver the permits. We have invited the conciliation of agreements to formal commerce, but many do not, that does not mean that we do not proceed with the delivery of these spaces “ says Wilson Buitrago, Undersecretary of Public Space of Medellín.
To access these permits, the person must demonstrate that they are vulnerable, have occupied the requested space for at least three years, sell legal products, make covered payments, and comply with the behavior agreements stipulated in the MEP Public Space Manual.
“No one chooses to be a landlord in the sun and water in the city as a life project, this dynamic responds to the fact that the economy does not allow for labor inclusion for all, for this very reason we cannot re-victimize. We don’t want these people to commit illegality out of necessity,” he said. says Buitrago.
The concern for ending the cycle of poverty and the reduction of public space in the center in the short and long term is what today mobilizes formal commerce:
“We do not agree that permits are issued without effective regulation and we also believe that issuing more permits is condemning those people who work in public spaces to poverty,” Door points out.
This is why the undersecretary insists that the formal permit is an excuse to link people to the institutional offer and allow them to access formal employment. They insist from the Medellín Mayor’s Office that during the year in which the permit is granted many of the formal vendors manage to change their productive vocation:
“We have events every week in which we have offers and at least 20 get different formal jobs; We also take ISVIMED so that they can have their own home and also Sapiencia so that their children can study and get out of the cycle of extreme poverty”, points out the Undersecretary of Public Space.
According to the administration, it is about recognizing that 6,600 of the 35,000 street vendors are regularized with whom better habitability conditions can be generated in the territory, however the controversy persists because, according to businessmen, the definition of urban space or the concepts of “urbanizing ” and “recover” today are bets contrary to the state vision.
They insist that although in some cases public places have been remodeled or conditioned to change the appearance of abandonment, many today are “legally” invaded with permits that promote the right to work but limit space for passers-by.
The debate continues because what the center lives today must reconsider the deficient economic opportunities and decent living conditions that informal vendors have and think about how, instead of regularizing spaces where there is no longer availability for more sales, doors can be opened for entrepreneurship improve life options; a concern that must be tacitly assumed by the new mayor who must reconsider this scenario and the commitment that Medellín will be an accessible city for all.
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