CANACONA: It has now come to the fore that the practice of non-Goan small and medium enterprises keeping their shops open for extended hours has not only driven the local businessmen to bankruptcy but the workers employed by them mainly from their own home State are made to toil off the clock without any compensation.
Businessmen in Canacona allege that these non-Goan shopkeepers mainly from Gujarath and Rajasthan have opened many shops and keep their shops open from 7 am till 9 pm, are forcing their workers to work for more than 12 hours a day with a 10 minute lunch break sometimes.
Normally paid meagrely, with no holiday on public holidays, Sundays or any weekly off, the owners of these shops are completely flouting labour laws. “This manner of running business is ruining hundreds of small retail businesses owned by locals who employ all local boys and girls,” local shopkeepers complain.
Due to these unfair practices not only the shop counter sales staffers suffers but the locals cannot compete with them and eventually most of the local shop owners with huge business loans are driven towards bankruptcy.
Diogo Da Silva, the president of Association of Businessmen of Canacona formed a couple of years ago to promote and protect the interest of local businessmen, says that the authorities are acting deaf and dumb even though they have been informed of this practice by the non-Goan shop owners at Chaudi town of Canacona he alleged.
“We had made a written complain to the labour office in Margao in the past saying that the non-Goan shopkeepers, who outnumber the local shops, are out to grab all businesses run by locals since ages by following unfair trade practices. But the labour department didn’t do anything,” he said.
