Nishar Mohammed
Port Blair, May 15: The Andaman Nicobar Pradesh Congress Committee under the leadership of its President Mr. Kuldeep Rai Sharma organized a Dharna at Tiranga Park on 15/05/2018 from 10.00 against the forceful shutdown of stalls of poor self employed vendors at North Bay Plantation by the BJP PRI members. The self employed vendors of North Bay Plantation and also the aggrieved street vendors of Municipal area participated in the Dharna in large number.
Mr. Kuldeep Rai Sharma, PCC President in his address has expressed serious concerns over the rising highhandedness and growing insensitivity observed in functioning of the elected local bodies i.e. Zilla Parishad and Municipal Council towards the poor self employed and unemployed people of these Islands.
Referring to the issue of unemployment, Mr. Kuldeep said that in the private section, tourism & it’s connected activities are perhaps turning out to be the biggest source of providing livelihood to the educated and uneducated mass of these islands. Inviting reference to the recent incident of North Bay, Mr. Kuldeep said, during the past five years or so North Bay beach and its seafront has turned out to be one of the most preferred tourist destination due to Islanders venturing and developing water sports facilities at this arena.
The North Bay seafront where the water sports activities are conducted lies adjoining to the North Bay Plantation which is held on lease with the Andaman Plantation & Development Corporation Pvt. Ltd. (APDC) Since there was no shopping facilities available in the vicinity of North Bay beach, the APDC in order to facilitate tourist as also to water sports operators have constructed around 56 temporary eco-friendly stalls and let out at nominal rent to the unemployed people of these islands for selling packaged water, tender coconuts, eatables, sea shell products etc. catering to the need of tourists visiting the place.
Kuldeep said that these poor self employed people for past five years or so are operating the stalls to earn livelihood for themselves and their families following the norms of having licence for retail shops issued by the Assistant Labour Commissioner under Shops & Establishment Act and the food stall operators having Food Safety Licence issued by the appropriate authority.
“However, consequent to recent instigation made by the sitting Pradhan of BJP and ex-Zilla Parishad Adyaksh of BJP, these poor self employed people have been instructed to shut down their stalls,” Mr. Sharma said.
Aggrieved with such inhumane attitude of the ruling party, the stall operators called upon Mr. Kuldeep and requested to fight for their cause of livelihood. Accordingly he took up the matter with the Administration but could not obtained any relief due to alleged interference of the local BJP leaders who vehemently and forcefully vacated the stalls from the present incumbents.
Left with no option, the Congress party in order to express solidarity with the aggrieved poor Islanders and to fight for their legitimate right to live, organized Dharna to-day to launch agitation in favour of stall operators who are forcefully being oppressed by the BJP leaders.
The PCC President also strongly condemned the action being taken by the Port Blair Municipal Council in driving away the poor road side small shaks selling eateries in the pretext of Smart City without considering the financial crisis to which these poor people and their families will be subjected to.
Mr. Kuldeep also invited the attention of BJP State President Mr. Vishal Jolly and Member of Parliament Mr. Bishnu Pada Ray towards the atrocities done to the poor Islanders and said if you don’t have political will to create employment opportunities for the poor and needy islanders at least attempt need to be made not to deprive poor Islanders of their present source of livelihood through self employment.
Senior Congress leaders Smti Shanta Singh, Mr. Noor Islam, Smti Ratnakannan, Mr. AR. Manickam, Mr. Tamil Selvan, Mr. AR Andan also addressed the meeting and expressed their views.
