PANJIM: Hundreds of Goa Pradesh Mahila Congress workers and supporters led by their president Pratima Coutinho protested against the Big Daddy casino on Saturday.
The protesters marched from Azad Maidan to infront of the Big Daddy casino premises located near the Captain of Ports jetty where they were stopped by the police from further entering the premises of the casino.
Santa Cruz MLA Tony Fernandes and CCP Corporator and former mayor Surendra Furtado also joined the protesters. The protests led to a traffic jam on D B Bandodkar road.
Pratima accused the casinos of using and abusing women in the industry. She further accused the Big Daddy casino of using women against the Panjim MLA Babush Monserrate, who abused the MLA with foul language.
She said, “We have demanded that the women involved in abusing our MLA should be arrested and action taken against them. If the police fail to do so then we will protest against the police in much bigger numbers for being hand-in-glove with the casino lobby.”
Mahila Congress workers and other supporters which included a large number of males raised slogans against the high handedness of the casinos and accused the casinos of creating public nuisance during the evening hours as people are not able o freely move along the pavement due to illegal structures and parking of vehicles.
Tensions spiraled when one of the casino staff was video recording the whole protest on his mobile phone and when Pratima finished speaking to the media he began to move back to the casino staff. Mahila Congress workers demanded that police confiscate his mobile phone and delete all the recordings.
Santa Cruz Tony Fernandes accused the government of protecting the casino lobby. “This casino lobby has been hiring women to attack the elected representative and stop them from acting against the casinos.”
