Vested interests stall shifting of trading to APMC yard

By CT reporter
MANGALORE : The process of shifting the trading in the Bunder area in the city to the APMC yard at Baikampady, set up several years ago, has been suffering a setback thanks to a few vested interests which are dead against shifting of the trading.
The APMC yard at Baikampady has been set up at a cost of Rs 30 crores in an area spread over 85 acres by the government several years ago, in the better interests of farmes, traders and middlemen. Even the president of Mangalore APMC Krishnaraj Hegde is keen on shifting the trading to Baikamapdy and has also constituted a separate committee for the purpose.
The committee headed by Hegde himself has Vinaykumar Soorinje, Melwyn D’cunha, Ahmed Bava and Ratnaker Nayak as members while Shantharm Shetty and Gangadhar Ullal are honorary members.
However, the few vested interests are of the view that if trading is shifted to Baikamapdy, it would have severe bearing on the traders and the trading in Mangalore whch has a history of over 500 years.They are also of the ocntention of the nearly 15000 workers and their families would also face problems.
It is also surprising to hear the statements of the headload workers’association leaders like Ivan D’Souza, Azeez Kudroli and others that the headload workers in the Bunder area would be rendered destitutes if trading is shifted to Baikampady.
Interestingly, just as the committee formed to hasten the shfiting process has leaders of all parties, even the opposition group has leaders of all parties. Even one of the committee members Ratnaker Nayak is said to be against the shifting process.
It is a fact that the government efforts to shift the trading of agriucltural produce to Baikampady has not met with success till date mainly owing to the lobbying of the Bunder traders who are dead against shifting least botherd about the fact that their shifting was much more essential in order to ease congestion in the area.
If at all the traders in Bunder are allowed to carry on business there itself it would only benefit the traders and not the farmers or growers of agricultural produce. The farmers in fact want the trading to be shifted to Baikampady itself .
It cannot be forgotten that the agricultural marketing department of the government is aimed at protecting the interests of farmers and not the traders. Let the government give its green signal to the commencing of trading in APMC yard within a time frame as a next step of the denotification of the Bunder area.