MARGAO: The South Goa Planning and Development Authority (SGPDA) in its first board meeting on Thursday decided that it will collect Sopo temporarily for the next three months with an aim to end the dispute between wholesale fish market traders and the earlier Sopo contractor and streamline the collection process.
The meeting was presided by SGPDA chairman and Vasco MLA Krishna ‘Daji’ Salkar.
Sopo is kind of nominal fees collected from floating hawkers and small merchant on a daily basis for use of vacant space.
“This decision was taken to put an end to the dispute over the Sopo collection. There was a court order stating that the Authority should collect the Sopo until tendering process is complete. So we will do it and we have e-tendering process, which will be transparent and everyone can bid for it,” Salkar said.
Board member and Margao MLA Digambar Kamat also said the e-tendering process is the best solution and with the SGPDA itself collecting Sopo in the interim period, it would streamline the handling of collections for now.
Kamat also urged the Authority to pay the salaries of daily wage workers. Issues regarding the SGPDA staff were also discussed at the meeting.
The decisions taken by the Authority under its previous chairman were criticised but Salkar said he would not directly level any accusations without going through all the details first.
However, he questioned why the Authority in the last tenure had taken decisions which he said ‘lacked legal sanctity’.
Salkar pointed out that the Authority has a huge amount of financial liabilities and could find itself in trouble if action is not taken at the earliest. He gave the example of pending payment of bills worth lakhs of rupees to various agencies, contractors as well as the government departments. The SGPDA is yet to clear the payments for its power and water supply bills.
“This issue was raised at our meeting and directions have been given to clear these bills. The government will decide if an inquiry is needed into this matter,” Salkar said while responding to media queries.
He added that the Authority has been assured of all the support from the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Minister.
“We have also discussed a tentative roadmap. We have not taken decisions yet, we will at the next meeting but the overall aim is to increase the revenue of the Authority. For example, we have plots at Davorlim, which we will start auctioning,” Salkar said.
He added that other government departments also operate on land belonging to the SGPDA and issues regarding revenue that has to be earned by the Authority will be discussed with the government departments directly.
He clarified that while the issue of raising the rent paid to the SGPDA by the retailers has been discussed, a decision on this will be taken only after studying the matter. He said another key area was developing the markets where a new parking lot can be built while the phase-wise construction of the wholesale fish market will be expedited.
