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Chandigarh MC eyes ₹8 crore annual collections as vending fee to go up by 5% from April
Chandigarh municipal corporation, which earns ₹60 lakh a month from the vending license fee, increases the fee annually at 5% compound rate of interest.
Come April 1 and street vendors in the city will have to shell out 5% more as vending fee, even as most of them complain of losses due to the Covid pandemic.
The municipal corporation, which earns ₹60 lakh a month from the vending license fee, increases the fee annually at 5% compound rate of interest.
The vending fee ranges from ₹300 to ₹2,000. There are around 11,000 registered vendors and 46 vending zones in the city. For the coming fiscal, the MC has pegged its collections from vending fee at ₹8 crore.
Ram Milan, president, street vendors association, said, “We will be submitting a request for waiving off of the license fee increase for the new financial year. It has been two difficult years, and we have not been able to sustain ourselves in the face of the Covid pandemic.”
In November last year, MC had exempted the vendors from paying the fee for May 2021 on account of pandemic.
Meanwhile, many vendors are failing to pay the fee.
An MC official said, “There are around 4,000 vendors who have outstanding fee payment. Of these, around 2,000 are habitual offenders who have missed on their payments on multiple occasions.”
Milan said, “The vendors are increasingly moving away from vending zones to their old locations. High vending fees and condition of vending zones are the two reasons for vendors leaving the stipulated zones.”
Vendors also rue that for nearly a year, the town vending committee has largely remained defunct.
The committee comprises five representatives of vendors, municipal commissioner and officials from the UT administration and of the vendor cell (legal). The committee of the civic body deals with all vending matters, makes policies and takes key decisions.
The elections to the apex body for vendors’ issues were due last year. But the process has recently been started and the elections are now slated for March 24.
