GUWAHATI: Street Vending Plan without identifying proper vending zones is of no use, feel vending association.
Regarding the street vending issue in Guwahati, the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) once again woke up from hibernation and now it is again planning to prepare a new vending plan by six months. It is not the first time that the urban local body worked on such a plan.
The Assam Government in July 2020 had claimed that the state in an attempt to regularise the ever-increasing numbers of street vendors in Guwahati and to provide them with proper licence and business amenities, formulated a new scheme called The Assam Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Scheme 2020. It needs to be mentioned that instead of formulating a new scheme only if the state government would have implemented Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, no new scheme was required.
Even after 8 years of the Act being in force the Assam Government and the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) has failed to implement it in Guwahati.
After the street vendors act was passed in March 2014, a town vending committee was formed which was headed by the GMC commissioner and the members were from various sectors like NGO, 40% members from vendors, bank and police.
GMC officials then claimed that vending committee identified various zones like South zone, West zone, East zone, Lokhara zone and Dispur zone.
The zones might have been identified but it was never notified, a GMC source said. The source added that in the past nothing much had happened.
After the act a survey was completed in April 2015 to identify the vendors and according to the results there were 7182 street vendors in the city. There were 497 food vendors, 727 cloth vendors, 661 fruit vendors, 2044 vegetable vendors, 194 fish vendors, 82 meat vendors, 1163 pan/tamul vendors, 183 chana/puchka/bhel muri vendors and 1631 others.
All these vendors were expected to get vending zones with legal papers which never happened. GMC even declared the divider opposite Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) as a vending zone in 2015 and claimed to have provided amenities to the vendors. After the BJP came to power in the state in 2016, the same vending zone was evicted violating the Street Vending Act as according to the act, the vendors could be evicted only after providing them a vending zone.
This time again the urban local body is being assisted by Assam State Urban Livelihoods Mission (ASULM) to conduct the survey and chalk out a proper street vending plan within six months. The survey recently started in Ganeshguri.
A senior official of GMC talking to G Plus said, “Al India Institute Of Local Self Government is the third party which will conduct the survey and prepare a city street vending plan within six months.”
The party will identify vending zones and the street vendors after the survey will be allotted the vending zones, informed the official.
The party conducting the survey, after the plan is completed and all the vendors are settled, will get Rs. 204 against one vendor, said the GMC official.
The plan will be presented before the government and accordingly it will be approved after scrutiny.
A member of Assam Street Vending Association talking to G Plus said that everyday new vendors are setting up vending stalls in many footpaths of the city. It will be difficult to conduct a genuine survey. “Moreover, the plan without proper vending zones is of no use. Most difficult part of chalking out the plan is identification of vending zones,” said the member.