Mumbai: Activists miffed with zonal committees work; hawking policies c

Customers crowd around hawkers in Sion. File Pic

Citizen activists have a bone to pick with the civic administration, which is all set to start the implementation of the hawkers' policy and finalise the permanent pitches before handing out the licences. The activists have criticised the working of the zonal town vending committees, as the administration is unwilling to share information with members of the committees.

According to the policy, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was to include citizen activists and hawkers' union members along with administrative staff of ward offices to decide hawking and non-hawking zones. The pitches also were to be run through members of the respective (seven) zonal committees. Only after approval at the zonal level, the proposal was to be presented to the main town vending committee (TVC) of the city, which is chaired by Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta.

However, this process has not been taking place, alleged the members, raising several issues, such as no uniformity in the meetings to be held for zonal TVCs, guidelines for determining hawking & non-hawking zones not yet circulated in all zones, and pitches being marked on the footpaths without the approval of the concerned zonal TVC.

Activists of several zones and representatives of AGNI and NAGAR, both NGOs, came together on Wednesday and decided to approach the civic chief and the central TVC with these issues.

Viren Shah, a member of the zonal TVC and president of the Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association, said, "We will be voicing our concerns to the state government and the BMC commissioner, as we, too, have a say in the committee. Also, the guidelines are yet to be circulated and yet work of selecting pitches is on." A senior civic official said, "The work is going on as per the policy itself. The proposals submitted to the central committee are forwarded only after discussion with members of the zonal committees."

Also Read: Mumbai: BMC Gets 3,165 Suggestions For Marking Hawking Zones

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