The Hassan City Municipal Council has attracted the wrath of vegetable sellers by imposing a penalty of ₹500 on a seller in Kattinakere Market in the city. A health inspector of Hassan CMC, on Tuesday, slapped the fine for not keeping a sanitiser bottle.
During the rounds in the market, a team of officers noticed a vegetable seller not keeping the sanitiser. The seller said he would keep do so if the administration had given him one. This led to a heated argument between the sellers and the officers. At one point, a health inspector tried to snatch the seller’s balance scale. The officer demanded a penalty of ₹500.
The vegetable seller maintained that he had hardly made business since the morning and he could not afford to pay the fine. The officer said that if he did not pay the fine on the spot, his shop would be lifted from the market. The vegetable seller paid the fine, probably with the help of his friends in the market. A video clip of the incident has gone viral in the city. Many people have expressed their anger over the officer’s conduct.
When this issue was brought to the notice of Deputy Commissioner R. Girish, he said keeping a sanitiser bottle was compulsory for establishments, not vegetable sellers in the market. “I will talk to the officer who slapped fine on the vegetable seller”, he said. Further, he added that the public had to cooperate with the administration in its efforts to avoid the spread of the infection.
