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Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 9
Former Union Minister and former MP Pawan Kumar Bansal has stated that the implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act in Chandigarh has been totally botched up.
In a letter to Punjab Governor and UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore, the Congress leader stated that the problem began with the ‘faulty’ demarcation of vending and no-vending zones.
Delineation of vending sites just in front of shops in busy markets aggrieved shopkeepers, as they would not be able to reach their own shops after parking their vehicles in the market parking lots, Bansal said.
“Further, people from around the city have rushed here to get themselves enrolled. This swelled the list to, I understand, 21,622 though according to the earlier survey, the number of vendors in the city was not more than 8,600,” he added.
As a result, most of the genuine, petty and poor street vendors, who had been working in various labour colonies like Ram Darbar, Bapu Dham, Dadu Majra, Mauli Jagran, Maloya and Dhanas etc. would be rendered jobless as the number of sites fixed for each colony was far less than the number of ‘rehri-phadi’ workers already operating from there for even four decades, Bansal pointed out.
“Clubbing together of all vendors will result in large-scale displacement, contrary to the provisions and the spirit of the Act. As a consequence of this process, a vendor selling his wares or providing petty service in, say, Maloya for decades can be allotted a site in Sector 30 and vice-versa or may even fail to get a site anywhere,” the former MP said.
Bansal stated that essential service providers like those running cycle repair shops, roadside barbers, cobblers, ‘dhobis’ and dyers or those selling seasonal ordinary things like groundnuts, water melons, corn cobs, vegetables etc. and those making tea etc. were left out of the process.
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