There is a special bond between flowers and occasions; they
express our sentiments, whether love, happiness or sorrow, when words fall
short. That’s why reports about the Goa State Horticultural Corporation Ltd
taking the lead in providing fresh flower bouquets at its stalls at nominal
fees comes as good news. Chrysanthemum, Gladious and Gerbera flowers will be
supplied to the stalls by GSHCL where they will be decorated in a bouquet by
trained staff.
Nelson Figueiredo, managing director, GSHCL, says, “Through
this initiative we plan to get people, especially women’s groups, together to
train them to prepare bouquets, decorating them beautifully and selling them to
the end buyer at nominal fees. The flowers will also be supplied by the
Horticultural Department. We want to have standardised bouquets and to train
the staff to hone their skills and guide the groups.”
He further adds, “We have received a very positive response
so far from flower growers and self help groups. We are still identifying
different regions of Goa where the stalls can sell flowers in the form of
bouquets. We want to start with the stalls in the cities and then looking at
the feedback, approach the villages. We are in talks with the Zonal
Agricultural officers as well.”
However, the garlands and the local flower vendors or the
florists will not be affected by this move, “We don’t want to upset their
livelihood and we will be only providing bouquets and they will sell the local
flower garlands that are used for different religious ceremonies. As flowers
have a very limited shelf life, there will be the initial risk but every
activity has its risk,” says Nelson.
The advantage of this initiative will be that the flower
growers in the regions of Sanguem, Sattari, Ponda and Dharbandora will have an
outlet of getting their flowers to the customers through these stalls and even
other florists can approach them with higher consignments. GSHCL will start off
with providing stalls in Panjim, Mapusa, Margao and Vasco to see the feedback.
Stalls and self help groups from Bicholim has also shown interest.
Lalit Kumar Agarwal of Florence Flora, Panjim has been in
the exotic flower business from the past 30 years. He agrees that the
government initiative will not affect his business and is glad to support it as
it will help identify local flower suppliers. “We are importing flowers from
Bangalore and Mumbai currently and once the scheme starts, I don’t think it
will affect any florists who have an establishment. We grow our own flowers and
50 per cent of the flowers sold in our shop are supplied by local flower
suppliers. We have flowers from 16 states of India being sold and even get
exotic flower material from Holland,” says Lalit, adding, “It is a good concept
by the Goa State Horticultural Corporation Ltd and it will get more locals
growing flowers involved in the scheme. We may get our flowers here itself
instead of Bangalore or Mumbai and it will save us on transport and damages,”
says Lalit optimistically.
