MANGALURU: The Central Market Merchants Association, while assuring all cooperation to the authorities in demolishing the existing market, has demanded suitable alternate arrangement with all basic amenities be made for existing traders there to carry out their trade till the new market building is constructed. Plans are afoot to construct the new market building under the Smart City pan city development agenda on a PPP basis.M Ahmed Bawa, honourary president of the association, told reporters on Tuesday that the present central market houses 132 wholesale traders who sell coconut , fruits, and vegetables, 342 retail traders and 18 flower vendors. Likewise, there are shops that sell grocery items, clothes, utensils, toys, scents and a host of other day to day items. Most of these shops have trade license issued by Mangaluru City Corporation, Bawa said.A section of traders here also sold agricultural produce subject to regulations imposed on such trade by Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) and also paid the market fee, he said. The market with a history of 54-years was not just a hub of trade, but also a place that fostered communal amity in that people of all faith work alongside each other, Bawa said, adding the market was a source of livelihood for more than 1000 people.The market is also a suitable centre place for farmers in and around Mangaluru to sell their agricultural produce, Bawa said while adding the central market not only supplies vegetables to other retail vegetable shops dotting the city, but also to hospitals, hotels, hostels and even religious places. The administration must take the views of all traders here before shifting it to other place, demolish the existing market and rebuild it at the earliest, he noted.

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