Team Herald
MARGAO: The random testing for formalin at the retail fish market in Margao undertaken by Goa Pradesh Congress Party on Saturday created quite a ruckus as fish vendors ventilated their grievances and demanded that the fish at the wholesale market be tested first.
Congress workers got the fish testing kit manufactured in Cochin from Ponda and stood outside the fish market and tested the fish brought to them by the people who had purchased it in the market. “We have only come to remove the fear in people’s mind about formalin presence in the fish,” said GPCC President Girish Chodankar.
However, quite a few samples tested positive for formalin. Some sardines, mackerals, butter fish and prawns tested positive for formalin while kingfish and mullet (xevtto) were negative. The purchasers of the fish that tested positive were quite agitated and some of them apparently returned the fish to the vendor from whom it was purchased.
This led to a ruckus as fish vendors questioned the Congress members present and accused them of causing damage to their business. MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco took pains to explain to the vendors that they were not against them and agreed with their demand to test the fish in the wholesale market first.
“We just purchase the fish in the wholesale market and then get it to sell it in retail in the market,” argued the fish vendors. Reginaldo promised to go with them to the whole sale fish market and test the fish there. He also pointed out that fish caught by ramponnkars get a better price now because they had raised this issue of formalin laced fish coming in the freezers.
In fact one vendor Sebastiana Cardoso who came with her basket of fish was aghast to know that her fish had tested positive and cursed Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai for bringing this “curse of imported fish” upon them.
She said she had purchased the fish from a trawler owner but could not explain whether it was a Goan trawler owner or from across the border.
President of Retail Fish Vendors Association Felix Gonsalves demanded that the government set in place a machinery to test the fish at the wholesale market and give the result there itself instead of carrying out a preliminary test at the market and taking the fish to Panjim for another conformity test.
He also asserted that fish that is coming from outside Goa is from nearby areas like Malwan and Karwar where he said not only was the weather similar to Goa but even the catch was nearly the same.
The Congress leaders, including Goa in charge Dr. Chellakumar, purchased some of the fish that had tested positive from the people and said they would be sending it for confirmatory test to the Food and Drugs Administration and also to one private laboratory.
MLAs Nilkant Halarnkar, Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, Clafasio Dias and Wilfred alias Babashan D’Sa were present for the testing exercise along with Goa Pradesh Mahila Congress President Pratima Coutinho who was present with quite a number of ladies.
Activist Grenville Dias who has been following up the issue of formalin-laced fish for quite some time also tested some fish samples and confirmed that they were positive for formalin presence. The fish was also tested for ammonia presence which mostly turned negative.
The Congress leaders lamented that the FDA had stopped testing of the fish and argued that the government was playing with the lives of the people as fish had tested positive for formalin. Pratima opined that the fish purchased from ramponnkars was free of formalin while other fish had traces of formalin in it.
