Team Herald
MARGAO: Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao temporarily succeeded in accommodating around 25 fishermen from Colva, who are conducting retail trade, into the wholesale fish market area on compassionate grounds.
On Friday morning, there were heated arguments between the contractor collecting levy charges and the fishermen at the wholesale fish market as retail trade happened.
Churchill met South Goa Planning and Development Authority Chairman Wilfred D’Sa and Fisheries Minister Philip Neri Rodrigues along with the fishermen.
Churchill said, “These fishermen are elderly and have been selling their fish here for several decades. They should be allowed in the market.”
SGPDA Chairman D’Sa said that the permission to sell fish is given purely on compassionate grounds as the fishermen say that they have been conducting their retail trade at the wholesale market for decades.
“The market will soon go for renovation and after that there won’t be scope to allow retail business when the new wholesale market is commissioned,” said chairman.
The vendors and the federation of the retailers at the SGPDA retail market informed that this is the very reason why the business at the retail market is not progressing.
It is informed that these traders are the ones, who had reportedly fled from the new SGPDA retail market 20 years ago, for not allowing to conduct business here.
The wholesalers at the market too are of the opinion that retail trade can’t be allowed at the wholesale fish market.
The SGPDA has already given an undertaking in the court not to allow retail trade at wholesale market. The issue will be a tight rope walk for the SGPDA.
