MARGAO: A few years back, an initiative of the Digambar Kamat government brought the Horticulture gaddas to Margao and the idea was to serve Goans veggies at cheaper prices. But the Margao MLA’s initiative has started to turn out as a bane to Madgavkars.
“Basically, any Horticulture gadda that sets up in Margao, starts with the standard kiosk (gadda) allotted to them with the licence plate and the rate card, but over a few months these gaddas seem to become like a massive walking vegetable vendor,” explains Rajeev Naik, a Margao resident. Naik brought to Herald’s notice the horticulture gadda near the civil court that has encroached Margao Municipality property and has actually become a walking stall and uses a discarded Maruti car to store and display the veggies.
Similarly Herald comes across a gadda along the Fatorda stadium wall and one near a car washing centre at Modsai which have encroached pavement space and extended with tarpaulins and setup bins and crates and have become a nuisance to pedestrians and also vehicle owners who struggle with parking.
“To reduce red tape, we have made the licensing very simple for them. Unlike earlier the gadda owner just needs an NOC of people staying or living around the area of doing business besides the gadda and then we issue a licence. We have eliminated the whole paperwork of MLA’s signature or a NOC of the local municipality and that’s how easy it is to get an operational licence for a gadda,” explains the Officer in Charge at the Department of Horticulture Office near MMC Ground, Margao.
Goa State Horticulture Corporation chairman and MLA Kiran Khandolkar when approached over the nuisance created by the gaddas explains that getting the municipality involved in permissions saw a lot of hafta and red tape, hence we have issued direct licences. When Herald raised the issue of encroachments, he said that all that can be looked into after elections.
“Earlier we issued licences and NOC for these gaddas, now they take the owner’s NOC in the vicinity and get a licence so we don’t really have jurisdiction to act on these gaddas. It’s a tricky situation on what basis we’ll seize them for extension of their gaddas,” explains Margao Municipality Chief Officer Y B Tawde.
While senior councillor Tito Cardozo asserted that most people doing business in these gaddas are Goans and hence it’s a little tricky and difficult to come in there and question them on these many extensions and shabby tarpaulins though I admit that the extensions looked terrible. Also these gadda owners run out of space to store and display all their veggies and also to take them home and bring daily, hence I foresee this problem of illegal extension.
“Horticulture gaddas are supposed to store and sell only quantities of only 20 kgs of vegetables to households for domestic consumption. It’s a little fishy that these kiosks have veggies of over 100 kgs to display and sell. A lot of them siphon extra quantities at cheap vegetables at government rate and divert it towards restaurants and hotels and hence to store such quantities they have the encroachments and sadly nobody is acting on them, neither the MMC nor the Horticulture Board,” explains Desmond DSa, who shows another Horticulture Gadda which is no longer temporary and is mounted on stilts and has encroached and functions in Borda with even an extended rickshaw.
