the goan I network
MARGAO
With the new fishing season yet to take off in full flow because of the current wet spell, the South Goa Planning and Development Authority faces an acid test to clear the wholesale fish market from the 100-odd migrant vendors.
Primarily engaged as porters and labourers to carry ice and fish boxes, these vendors double up as retailers in the wholesale market, not only inviting the wrath of the traditional fishermen from coastal area, but the retail vendors doing business in the PDA retail market.
That a storm is brewing in the wholesale fish market over the presence of the migrant vendors became evident on Tuesday when a group of traditional Goan fishermen called on the PDA officials to clear the illegal migrant vendors from the market.
Information revealed that the local fishermen, who had taken strong umbrage to the presence of the migrant fish vendors, had in the past taken the law in their own hands by throwing out the fish baskets belonging to the migrant workers.
The question that has come to haunt the traditional Goan fishermen in the wholesale fish market and the retail vendors in the PDA retail market is how come the migrant vendors sell fish in retail in the wholesale market right under the nose of the SGPDA official.
They wonder whether a mafia is working in the wholesale fish market by collecting huge sums of money from the migrant vendors to allow them to sit in the market day after day. “Otherwise, how does one explain the presence of the migrant retail vendors in the wholesale fish market when they are primarily work as porters,” questioned a traditional fish vendor, suspecting that the migrant vendors must be carrying out the business in the wholesale fish market with political patronage and support from a mafia.
The modus operandi used by the migrant vendors is simple. After completing their job of carrying fish boxes, they buy fish from wholesalers and sell the same in retail.
What’s interesting to note is that the SGPDA does not seem to be playing its due role in the wholesale fish market being the market owner. That the PDA has employed a wrong practice of engaging third parties to crack a whip against the vendors, a system that has failed to live up to the expectations of the vendors as well as the customers.
