DJ Venkatesh
Diglipur, Nov 14: The larger population of Diglipur is dependent upon agricultural and farming but the main Vegetable market where they have to sale their produces is becoming over-crowded day by day. The space available for the market is grossly inadequate all the vegetable vendors. Things are becoming too difficult for those farmers, who survive only by selling their produce daily in the market.
At present, the Gram Panchayat Subhash Gram is managing the vegetable market by collecting tax from the vendors. The Vegetable Market of Diglipur Bazaar was constructed more than 25 years ago and at that time it was having sufficient space for vegetable vendors.
The population of Diglipur has increased manifold in last 25 years and it is now more than thrice of the population when the building of Vegetable market was constructed. Now the situation is un-manageable with the same building to accommodate all the permanent Vegetable vendors as well as the daily sitters.
There are about 41 permanent vendors & more than 70 daily sitting farmers. The 70 % area of the Building has been occupied by the permanent vendors and the daily sitting farmers are forced to sell their produces in open area even during rain or under scorching Sun. Customers are also facing difficulties due to lack of space. The season of vegetable is going to start from end of November and will last upto March, during this period police is also unable to handle the crowd and the farmers are forced to sit on the roads to sell their produces.
Due to lack of sitting space in market, the daily sitting farmers who usually sell their products at cheap rates are forced to sell their produces to the permanent vendors who finally sell these produces at higher rates to the customers. Ultimately the customers are being cheated by the permanent Vegetable Vendors in Diglipur, they cunningly purchase the products of daily sitters by saying them “it is better to sell your products to us at whole-sale rate otherwise it will be damaged at the end of the day”. The innocent farmers has no option rather than to sale their produces in very cheap rate which is called as whole sale rate. The permanent sitting vendors are taking undue advantage of this situation.
It is a well known fact that Maximum vegetables in Andaman & Nicobar Islands are produced in Diglipur Sub-division. Vegetables are exported to all the areas like Billyground, Rangat, Kadamtala, Bhatubasti, Aberdeen Bazaar etc. areas by the permanent vendors from Diglipur but the public of Diglipur are forced to buy vegetables at higher rates.
This is high time for the Administration & Gram Panchayat to provide separate space to the daily sitting vegetable vendors so that they can individually sale their products without any interference of the permanent Vegetable Vendors. In this way the overall price of vegetable will come under total control, benefitting public.
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