Fish vendors in this capital city will return to their old seafood trading hub but in a newly refurbished building in the coastal village of Suba, home to fresh seafood, a city market official said Monday.

City market administrator Robert Barquilla, said next month, fish traders will return to the old Pasil Fish Port now named Cebu City Fish Market, after years of holding business at the “Bagsakan” center at the South Road Properties in Barangay Mambaling.

He said Mayor Michael Rama instructed his office to fast-track the transfer of the vendors so they would no longer have the inconvenience of doing business in a place not suitable for fish trading.

Although the new fish market still needs some improvements before it can resume operations again, Barquilla said fish vendors are determined to go back to Barangay Suba, their usual fish trading place in Metro Cebu.

Buyers of fresh fish, shells, crustaceans, and other seafood products from around Metro Cebu would usually visit the Pasil Fish Market across Cebu’s San Nicolas de Tolentino Parish, before its main trading building was destroyed by an earthquake in 2013.

Since 2013, fish trading has transferred to the coastal areas of Pasil Fish Port and the Bagsakan Center at the SRP when the fish port was reconstructed in 2018.

“But what I see in Pasil is that we still have to finish the road. That’s the road on Belgium St. where concreting work is ongoing. When that road is completed, we will transfer the fish trading in the area,” Barquilla said in Cebuano.

Barquilla said around 20 big stall holders will be transferred to the new fish market.

The new fish market, he assured, would be clean, orderly, and conducive to fish trading business. (PNA)