New Thirimingala Market expected to open in October

Thursday, 05 August 2010 12:48 Mizzima News

Rangoon (Mizzima) – Construction of the new Thirimingala Market is about 80 per cent complete and is expected to be finished in mid-October, an engineer at the construction site said.

The existing Thirimigala Market, one of Rangoon’s biggest wet wholesale bazaars, is to move to near Padauk creek, Hlaingtharyar Township after operating on Strand Road, Ahlone Township for the past 12 years. More than 500 construction workers have worked at the 12-acre (five-hectare) site.

“The new building is now 80 per cent complete. Currently, we are allocating parking space, but we can’t fix the date for October to move the market”, the engineer from the construction site said.

The market comprises six 28,800-square-foot (2,675-square-metre) buildings, two 11,520-square-foot buildings, an 8,640-square-foot building and a 48,000-square-foot storeroom, which will house 2,093 stalls and their goods for storage. There will also be 22 restaurants and a car park for about 400 vehicles, the engineer said.

In the existing Thirimingala Market, there are about 2,200 shops. The market operates 24 hours a day in a high-grade five-storey building. The new market has one storey.

“There are vacant rooms in the existing market. So, for the new market, we just arranged for space according to the number of active shops”, a project spokesman said.

Sellers from 168 markets and 11 tax-free markets in Rangoon Division have conducted trade with wholesalers at Thirimingala Market since it was built in 1998 – at a cost to shop owners of 110 million Kyats. The Rangoon City Development Committee contributed 30 million Kyats, a market committee spokesman said.

The city committee said it was moving the market because delivery trucks caused heavy traffic on Strand Road. However, the market committee said the heavy traffic was caused by junta-crony company Asia World’s container trucks that service the firm’s nearby port facilities.

The existing Thirimingala Market buys vegetables mainly from Rangoon, Pegu (Bago), and Mandalay divisions and Shan State and resells them to retailers from markets in Rangoon and Irrawaddy divisions.

All vegetable, fruit, preserved-fish and dried-fish shops would have to move to the new market, but Happy World playground and amusement park, which rented space under a long-term agreement, and 10 other companies had not been ordered to move, the market committee spokesman said.

Though an official from the Rangoon city committee said the wholesalers wanted to move to the new market, the wholesalers told Mizzima the opposite.

“It will take a while for the new market to become active and crowded. Even though the new building is impressive, it’ll take time to be lively. So, we don’t want to move”, a fruit wholesaler from the existing Thirimingala Market said.