The recently inaugurated Goa’s first state of art vegetable market of Mapusa, which has the capacity of only 250 vegetable vendors, is overcrowded.
During its opening, chaos and confusion was created because in race for space, instead of having only 250 vendors, the number had reached to 500 and above. Now there are 242 vendors, including 13 wholesale vendors who are sitting inside the market complex and more than 80 vendors who are sitting outside the building. There is separate place called ‘yard for wholesalers’ where these could have been moved to but the MMC did not bother to do that. MMC allows any type of vendor to carry on business on Fridays since it is a weekly market day.
As per the MMC, the oldest and regular vegetable seller got first place in the market. But now some of the oldest vegetable sellers could be seen outside and those who recently started off got space inside the market.
Sources said that vendors sitting inside the market got space as per the premium amount of Rs50,000 to Rs 2 lakhs paid by them. Those who could not afford had to accept wherever place was given. In this the MMC neglected the local vendors and gave preference to outsiders. With this premium amount paid, these vendors also pay Rs 100 to 180 as Sopo to the MMC every day. There was a need to make a list of vendors before starting with the construction of the building, but the MMC made list of the vendors only when the building was already ready for inauguration.
With allotment of space inside and outside, one of the vendor sitting inside said,” we are not getting business like before, because people buy directly from the people sitting outside. They do not enter the building”.
A vendor sitting outside said, “Even after giving space inside the market, some of the people from inside come and sit outside to sell vegetables. They sell both inside and outside thus getting double benefit. We have given several complaints orally to the person in-charge of this market but no action has been taken yet.”
Due to this mismanagement, not only the vendors but also the visitors cannot move freely inside the vegetable market area. The vendors sitting outside are given first preference by the visitors than to those sitting inside.
Franky Carvalho, Chairman of Mapusa market committee, said, “the sellers sitting outside the market are not regular sellers, they come only twice or thrice a week to sell local vegetables due to which they are given space outside the building. Only few local veggie sellers are given space inside the market”.
He further said, “Those who are sitting inside market also have their person sitting outside market which is not correct as per the rules. There has been mixture of vegetable sellers and fruit sellers for the time being because we did not want any vendor to sit outside the gate. This will be sorted out only after giving vendor registration cards mentioning location and if found at some other location, than their card will be cancelled. Soon we will be having meeting of all committee members to take resolution to distribute these cards which is in process.
Ashish Shirodkar, President of Mapusa Merchant Association and Ex chairperson of MMC, said: “The aim of the new building was to have clean vegetable market and good facility to the vendors as well as to customers. The MMC has totally failed in this aspect. The first preference was supposed to give space to Goans and not to outsiders but today only Goans can be seen outside in sun.”
