Does Margao municipal market really care about safety?

The fire at Kadamba Bus Stand, Panjim and a subsequent Facebook post of a concerned citizen which highlighted that all fire extinguishers expired as of January 2016 in the Secretariat, including in the Chief Minister’s office, raises concern of the fire safety of public spaces, especially markets.

In 2005, the New Municipal Market had a portion razed in a fire that affected over 40 shops one evening when a short circuit sparked the fire. Illegal wirings, encroachments, lack of fire safety checks and audits, lack of political will and failure of the municipality in checking illegalities within the municipal market have led to a plethora of problems at the New Market and Gandhi Market in Margao.

“Every tenant or those allotted in the market keeps extending their space. Initially the whole idea of Sopo Tax was to occupy the sopo to sit and sell your wares. But during the last few decades there’s has been walls, shutters around the sopos, to the extent that all the sopos have become shops and establishments with extra electricity connections, fridges, cooking and blending gadgets, air-conditioning, cooking, frying and all this with approvals and permissions and the MMC, that does little about this,” explains Chenorl Viegas, who runs a small run down shop selling cereal in the market complex.

Chenorl tells us how the market had passages wide enough for a fire truck to drive in but the encroachments and the storage of goods in the corridors makes the place a fire hazard.

While the MMC Sanitary Inspector explains to us that daily encroachments drives have been carried out, vendors shamelessly encroach and expand in their spaces on a daily basis and very little can be done about it.

While Devi Borkar, a vendor of the new Market association and part of the New Market Office Bearers explains to us that the government can resolve this issue only if the market is rebuild and proper allocations and demarcations are made. Devi also feels that the market unlike the existing model should go vertical and different types of vendors could be placed on different floors to ensure uniform fire safety checks are followed. 

While Babu Azgaonkar, who controls the Gandhi Market side explains to us that the onus is on the Municipality to upgrade the infrastructure and the Fire Safety Department to look into fire safety and ensure the norms are followed rather than blame the vendors and people.

The traffic cell Margao PI explains that his department is wary of the vendors parking goods carrier rickshaws and their personal vehicles along the market adding to the chaos and traffic congestion which can make it difficult for a fire truck to come towards the market complex.

“The electricity department needs to put the cables underground and cut out all the overhead cables and do checks on the illegal tapping from the overhead line and this will change the electrical connections that dangerously hand over the market and the short circuit sparks often burn down this market,” explained Deepka Naik, who runs a clothes shop in the market. 

Deepak says the shops and sopos are subleased often and migrants operate the stall and flout all rules for which there needs to be sublease and tenant rules that allow the association to terminate any vendor flouting rules of fire safety or stealing illegal electricity.