santosh naik
PONDA: The Ponda market has literally become a battleground for two groups of vendors who spar against each other on a regular basis, with Tuesday witnessing vendors biting, slapping each other and even destroying each other’s goods, including Mankurad mangoes.
A week ago, the footpath vendors were attacked with eggs, oil and manhandled allegedly by market shed vendors. The fight was stopped through the intervention of police and both groups were summoned to the police station. However, they refrained from lodging a police complaints to avoid going to court. The two groups have already filed several cases against each other including some against the Ponda Municipal Council.
A vendor Lalita Sawant from market shed said she was bitten by a woman footpath vendor, while Pooja Gawde a footpath vendor said they were manhandled by market shed vendors and their fruits were damaged.
Comparatively the market shed vendors who number around 650, clearly outnumber the five footpath vendors.
Meanwhile, Tuesday evening, at a press conference held at Ponda Market, the market shed vendors’ leader Kishore Mamlekar threatened that all of them would sit on the footpath and sell their goods, if the five footpath vendors are allowed to sit there by PMC.
He said in any case they will not tolerate vending on footpath. He cited that the five footpath women vendors have been given space inside the market shed in the presence Ponda Police Inspector, DySP and Council Inspectors but they are in the habit of sitting on footpath which creates losses to market shed vendors, and obstruction parking and pedestrian movement in the market.
The footpath vendors say that the space allotted to them inside the market shed by market shed vendors is not suitable as they suffer losses since they do not get customers there. Hence, they come to the footpath. They demanded that market shed vendors should give them convenient space to do business in market or else they be given the option to do vending on footpaths. According them the market shed vendors assembled illegally and manhandled them and damaged their goods.
