Fed up of delay, one hawkers’ union to seek Centre’s help

Hawkers in Borivli. Pic/Nimesh Dave

With the BMC finally holding a town vending committee meeting on May 3 to discuss the hawking policy, after cancelling it twice at the last minute, hawker unions are not on the same page as the civic body. While one union will highlight their issues at the Central government level, another union will submit their objections to the BMC. The policy attempts to provide designated spaces to legal hawkers.

The Azad Hawkers Union is planning to meet the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in Delhi to bring attention to the apathy of the Mumbai civic body and police with regard to issuing vending licences despite an order from the Supreme Court and assurance from the Centre.

Dayashankar Singh, president of Azad Hawkers Union, said, "On May 12, a delegation of hawkers from Mumbai will protest along with the National Association of Street Vendors of India against the corruption of the BMC and police and will hand over the memorandum to the Central ministry. The Centre distributed loans to hawkers and assured us that vending certificates would be provided as well. But the municipal corporation and police are not accepting the law passed by Parliament in 2014 and order passed by the Supreme Court."

He added that despite many applications, the state government is reluctant. Due to corruption, the number of new hawkers is
also increasing.

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The BMC was to hold a town vending committee meeting on February 28 and March 21. Though the city has been reeling under the menace of illegal hawkers taking up public spaces, like footpaths, for years, the BMC does not seem to be in a hurry to provide a permanent fix.

The policy has been stalled since 2019. The BMC were to meet the committee on March 21 to seek its approval for a list of hawkers, one of the many steps towards the implementation of the policy.

Shashank Rao, president of Mumbai Hawkers' Union, termed the meeting an eyewash. He said, "There were already 15,000 old hawkers but the civic body finalised another 17,000 after a faulty survey in 2014. We demanded that a new survey be held rather than holding an election for the town vending committee amid these 32,000 hawkers who have not been finalised through a transparent process and account for merely 10 per cent of the total estimated number of hawkers."