AMC Survey: Population of street vendors recorded by civic body raises eyebrows

Aurangabad, Oct 19:

The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation conducted a survey and recorded a tentative figure mentioning 14,500 street vendors/hawkers in the city. However, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Hawkers Federation (SBHF) has challenged the statistics claiming that there are around 1 lakh street vendors/hawkers in the city!

A delegation of SBHF led by comrade Abhay Taksal today met the commissioner of police (CP) Nikhil Gupta and urged him to implement the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 in the city.

Taksal brought into the notice of CP to provide protection to the street vendors/hawkers as their petty business had been affected badly in the past seven months. They are on the verge of starving as the market is yet to restore normalcy. Taksal mentioned that the shopkeepers do not suffer any losses due to street vendors. However, he was surprised over the demand of shopkeepers at Gulmandi to keep street vendors away from their shops.

The delegation mentioned that the survey was not done by declaring the time table. The civic body has not yet declared Hawkers Zone and No-Hawkers Zone. The delegation mentioned giving several memoranda in this connection to the AMC.

The delegation underlined that the AMC and the shopkeepers failed to make parking arrangements. One street vendor had committed suicide following a similar dispute during last year.

The delegation comprises Kiranraj Pandit, Shaikh Isaaq, Vijay Rojekar, Naeem Khan, Sagar Rasane, Mohd Shakeel, Vinod Bhavya, Ganesh Rojekar etc.