PANAJI: Goa Merchants Association today has submitted memorandum to Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant suggesting on framing rules under Municipalities Act.
The State government had kept in abeyance the recently-notified Goa Municipalities (Amendment) 2020, ordinance, a day after the All Goa Merchants Association announced they would strike across all municipal areas.
“We have been running these shops on municipality leases for decades. The new amendment terminates our leases after ten years. What are we going to do after that?” spokesperson for the Association Ashish Shirodkar
Shirodkar said that the ordinance would put traditional businessmen dealing with grocery, clothes, spices, dry and wet goods, out on the streets after ten years and bring about an air of uncertainty among families of thousands existing shop lease holders.
The Goa Governor had recently promulgated the Ordinance, which seeks to regularize unauthorized possession of municipal shops and thereby generate revenue to the council, and to limit the lease period of the shops to ten years and thereafter auction the same.