NESHWIN ALMEIDA
A few days back there was much uproar when the Margao municipal Chairperson, a practising pathologist, on one of her doctor visits to Victor Hospital, staged a scathing attack on the food carts known as gaddas. She also gave a deadline of just a few weeks before she would take action against these food carts and their illegalities.
“Gaddas can sell food but not cook it there. But here we can see vendors frying fish on the floor, running extensions to their food carts on the municipal drains and dumping their sewage and waste and clogging the storm water drain which is a real health hazard,” stated Dr Babita who has been on a war footing to eliminate illegal food gaddas from the town and the council’s 25 wards.
While her deputy Tito Cardozo explains how most gaddas from Borda, Aquem and Fatorda which were blocking flow of traffic have been eliminated or moved to the outskirts he admits illegalities persist with more than two gaddas functioning on the same registration number.
Team Herald decided to ride a good 20 kms around the town combing each and every bylane of the suburbs of Margao town and was shocked to find food carts or gaddas, which mostly sell bhajas, mirchis, bhel and shev puri or ras omlette, have use tarpaulin or cloth or even the shutter of the gadda to camouflage the wheels of the cart and make the cart appear like permanent structures. Most of the wheels of these carts are broken and non-functional.
“We pay sopo tax, fees to the food and drug authority, have our sanitation cards but still we face harassment from the municipality, market inspectors, traffic police and other government authorities and are troubled when we do business which we feel is the most unfair. All this, despite the business we draw includes people who can’t afford a high end expensive meal,” stated Laxmikant Chari, who runs a modified and grounded cart at Pajifond.
Supporting the market gaddas vendors, its association headed by president Prashant Naik, also the Ravindra Bhavan Chairman, asserted that the vending clearly says that the government needs to identify land for rehabilitation and a complete market for eateries through vending gaddas and only once that’s done they should be moved out. He alleges that the municipality doesn’t do enough to check on the illegalities and encroachments of some gaddas and then targets all gaddas including the honest ones that pay taxes and sanitation fees on time.
“I feel we won’t find any solution till we come up with a vendor’s policy. And allow only one type of fruit or vegetable gadda, one eatery and maybe one hawker of a different kind in each vending zone and place them in their respective vending zones with identity cards spelling out all the details clearly. I have been writing to the comunidade if we can create these vending zones in their land across all wards. We hope we can go in this direction and sort this gadda issue,” stated Dr Babita. She also blames her market inspectors and workers for failing to lift illegal gaddas or checking on illegalities like grounded gaddas and their encroachments.
