MARGAO
South Goa Planning and Development Authority’s ambitious plan to redevelop Goa’s lone wholesale fish market by tapping Rs 50 crore of central funds seems to have not made any headway.
And, the reason is not far to seek. The SGPDA is not sure whether the wholesale market land, spread across an area of 10,000 square meters, will be handed back over to the Planning body after the redevelopment done by the Fisheries department.
In fact, a similar question had come to haunt the SGPDA around half-a-decade ago when former Fisheries Minister Avertano Furtado had proposed to cap the woes of the wholesale fish market by tapping the central funds.
While the SGPDA had adopted a resolution to go in for the wholesale fish market redevelopment at its meeting held on August 3 last, the proposal has not moved forward since then.
SGPDA Chairman, MLA Wilfred D’Sa said the Planning body has decided to tread a cautious path over the developing the wholesale fish market with central government funds as members do not want to lose control over the market in the future. “We want to seek legal opinion about the status of the PDA’s control over the wholesale fish market land once it is being taken up for development by the Fisheries department. We want to be doubtly sure that the Fisheries department will return back the market and after the development,” D’Sa said.
In this respect, he pointed out that the SGPDA Member Secretary Vartika Dagur has been told to seek legal advice before any further action is taken in this respect.
The Goan, however, understands that the resolution adopted by the SGPDA is just lying in the record books of the PDA, with the resolution neither been forwarded to the Fisheries department nor any legal opinion sought, either from the Law department or from legal counsels till date.
The PDA had resolved to enter into a MoU with the Fisheries department, but nothing has moved in that direction in the last two months.
Incidentally, the SGDPA had resolved to reconstruct and redevelop the wholesale fish market with Rs 50 crore central funds, apparently with an eye of the 300 FAR status of the land. In fact, the PDA Chairman had announced after the August 3 PDA meeting that the PDA has decided to tap the 300 FAR status of the market land with a ground-plus-one storeyed building.
Incidentally, during MLA Vijai Sardesai’s stint as a Minister in the BJP government, the Goa State infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) was scheduled to take up the project at an estimated cost of Rs 18 crore. The project, however, could not be executed citing resource crunch.
Both the GSIDC plan and the resolution adopted by the SGDPA to redevelop the wholesale fish market are similar in nature, except that the PDA has now decided to also set up ice and cold storage facilities in the market and to tap the 300 FAR.
