CHENNAI: Taxes were paid and dues were settled but garbage and sewage remain on pothole-filled roads at one of Asia’s largest perishable commodities wholesale market in Koyambedu. The traders, who are forced to pay taxes after Madras High Court warned them of closure, are now raising pertinent questions about abject conditions of facilities inside the market.
On any given day, the market, which receives around 14,000 vehicles on average, including trucks, vans, auto-rickshaws, tricycles, two-wheelers and cycles, hardly has any facilities, not even basic ones like drinking water and clean toilets, to serve the thousands who visit.
“If they don’t set up the basic facilities, how can they seek tax and maintenance fees from us,” asked a trader, angry at the Market Management Committee (MMC) for its move to seal shops that fail to pay a maintenance fee.
Traders are fuming that they have to pay a maintenance fee for a market that is ill-maintained and lacks adequate truck bays for loading and unloading perishable goods.
Kamal Vishwa, who owns a vegetable shop and was facing the heat for not paying the fee, said the private firm that took the maintenance contract has not been cleaning the market regularly.
“We have been allotted a space to throw vegetable waste. But as it is seldom cleaned, we don’t have any alternative but to throw it in front of the shops,” said Vishwa, who has paid the dues grudgingly.
The market collects nearly 200 tonnes of garbage every day, which the MMC claims, is sent to the treatment plant.
There are 68 toilets in Koyambedu market which were renovated at a cost of around `4 crore but traders complained that these still are not maintained properly. An onion truck driver confided to Express that unclean toilets forced him to use the open ground in front of the market to ease himself.
However, officials denied toilets were badly maintained, but still blamed the traders for the poor condition.
“The toilets are renovated with high cost and it is also the responsibility of the traders to take care of it. People consume alcohol and break bottles inside the toilet creating a mess, and then blame the management,” a top MMC official alleged in response.
The official added that efforts are being made to have access control in the market as well as regulating parking inside the truck bays of the market. However, the issue is sub judice. “We are hoping to implement it by the middle of next month once the case is settled,” said an MMC official.
Aside from this, the lack of parking regulations inside the market has resulted in chaos. Vehicles from other States are parked for a long time affecting trade, said Illango, a shop owner, pointing to the truck from Rajasthan which was parked in front of his shop.
“Now to access the goods from my truck parked at a distance, I have to hire workers to carry it from there. This is a usual scene during peak hours,” he alleged.
The market also does not have water facilities for more than a decade. The three reverse osmosis plants proposed long back at a cost of `58 lakh have yet to be inaugurated. Officials now say these would be inaugurated in the first week of August.
The three plants are being set up in the 1st gate for the flower market, 4th gate for the fruit market and 14th gate for the vegetable market.
Meanwhile, the MMC is likely to seal 80 more shops for not paying the maintenance fee. “The fee is `1 per square foot that was fixed in 1998. The cost of clearing one tonne of waste in `1,000 these days. Vendors don’t understand that the service MMC provides to them is funded by the fee collected from them,” said a top MMC official.