DOHA: The Central Fish Market will be open in two shifts from tomorrow on a trial basis.
The evening shift will begin at 6pm and last until 11pm.
The market’s evening sales hours are being introduced on a trial basis for a month, while its morning vending timings, from 7am until noon, will remain unchanged.
The market’s operations in two shifts a day is apparently aimed at helping boost its business since it has been facing stiff competition from the mushrooming hypermarkets and malls for the past several years.
Also, since the market’s morning hours are from 7am until 12 noon, a lot of people are not able to visit it and they usually prefer to make fish purchases at convenient hours from shopping complexes.
During the trial period of a month how the evening shift of the market benefits consumers, vendors, fishermen and trawler owners will be assessed and based on that, a decision whether to make the evening hours a
permanent feature would be made.
An inter-ministerial committee with members from the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning, Ministry of Environment and the Consumer Protection Department (CPD) of the Ministry of Business and Trade has taken the decision to open the market in two shifts on an experimental basis.
The committee will closely monitor the working of the central market in the evening hours and arrive at a decision after a month, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported yesterday.
This is the first time that the fish market, located in Abu Hamour, is being opened in two shifts since from its inception it has always been open only in the mornings, QNA added.
The news agency said that trial auctions of fish stock were held in the evening last Sunday and Monday.
On Monday, an important development was that more stocks (21.5 tonnes) were auctioned than in the morning
(15 tonnes only).
Meanwhile, the market has been undergoing a major facelift and the vending floor is being expanded and a new cleaning area is being built.
People had long been complaining that the fish market was in a mess.
The Peninsula
