ELVINO ARAUJO
VASCO: With a week to Easter, the acute shortage of beef has alarmed traders and consumers in the port town of Vasco, leading to strong reactions from across the port town. Surprisingly, Goa Meat Complex (GMC) officials and the government’s assurance that they would supply beef regularly has not been met, complain Vasco beef traders, who also say that officials at GMC and the government have failed to live up to their assurances.
“With hardly a week to go for the Easter festival, and with the acute shortage of beef, we do not how we are going to supply beef to the consumers,” an owner of a cold storage store said.
Peter Cardozo was upset with the government action or inaction and said that the government is playing in the hands of the few to hurt the sentiments of the Christians and other minorities. “We have been living in a perfect harmony for decades and never has anybody objected to our eating beef. It is surprising to see that our government, instead of protecting our rights, is listening to some of the fringe elements from across the border and denying us our rights,” Cardozo said.
There is a lot of angst in Vasco over the statement made by Laxmikant Parsekar on the matter. “BJP should know that they came to power with our votes and in 2017 we will show the BJP government the doors as we did when the same BJP government that under the leadership of Manohar Parrikar was shown the doors for cancelling the Good Friday holiday,” a Vasco resident said.
Beena D’Costa of Issorcim was of a similar view. According to her the last time when the Parrikar government had cancelled the Good Friday holiday, the next election the Parrikar government lost and this time too the minorities will ‘teach the BJP government a lesson for creating this problem’.
“It is surprising to see the news channels showing Laximikant Parsekar begging with the NGOs to allow the transportation of beef and cattle from across the border. Instead of cracking a whip against the NGOs for taking law and order in their own hands the CM goes begging,” D’Costa said.
A beef stall owner, on conditions of anonymity given the current highly-charged atmosphere, said that the government has requested them to get certified cattle from across the border. “When we tried to get the cattle with all the documents we were stopped by the NGOs at the border and not allowed to take the cattle for slaughter at GMC. The police were just mute spectators to the harassment,” the stall owner said.
Though the GMC supplied, as per their assurance, frozen beef on March 7 and 11 to the cold storages, they failed to keep the supply going thus creating a further shortage of beef, added the owner of a cold storage store.
Another owner of a cold storage store claimed that whatever frozen beef was supplied was more of waste and less of consumable beef. “We had to listen to grumblings from our customers about the poor quality of beef sold to them as they thought that by selling such low quality beef we are making more profit,” he said.
“As the beef was of low quality and more of waste than of meat we did not buy the second consignment as people were complaining of the poor quality of beef. The government has recently announced about resuming the supply of fresh beef but till date there has been no beef supplied,” added the cold storage owner.
