Mumbai civic body to select members of seven zonal town vending committees
The zonal TVCs will handle hawkers’ registration, issuing of licences and demarcating vending/non-vending and restricted zones for hawking. The panel will work as a redress committee for both hawkers and citizens
After an unsuccessful attempt to select members of seven zonal town vending committees, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has re-advertised the application for interested citizens. The civic body had advertised for the same in December, but had failed to receive a good response.
The zonal TVCs will handle hawkers’ registration, issuing of licences and demarcating vending/non-vending and restricted zones for hawking. The panel will work as a redress committee for both hawkers and citizens.
Each of the seven zonal TVCs will have six members - one each from an NGO and community-based organisation, two each from resident welfare and trader associations, and one from market association. Those interested can send in their application to the BMC at their respective zones within 15 days.
In addition to the seven zonal TVCs, the main 20-member TVC is yet to be finalised. To prevent further delay, the BMC has also planned to submit the fresh list of eligible hawkers out of the 99,435 as per the 2014 survey to the labour commissioner by end of May. The labour commissioner will conduct election for hawkers’ representatives in 20-members TVC.
Last year, the BMC drew a lottery and selected eight hawkers’ representatives to be part of the TVC. These selected representatives were temporary and are to be replaced by the elected ones. According to the Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, hawkers will get 40% representation in the TVC.
Janardhan Singh, city president of the All India Unorganised Workers’ Congress, said, “The BMC has delayed the implementation of hawkers policy, which will be decide the fate of nearly one lakh hawkers. They are still determining the eligibility of hawkers. Also, they cannot continue with the selected hawkers as the zones should be finalised by the elected representatives and other TVC members.”
Once the seven zonal TVCs approve the list of vending zones, the list will be forwarded to the 20-member TVC for final approval. Moreover, the BMCs zonal committees will work for better coordination. In January last year, the state government had cleared its hawkers’ policy which allows anyone with a domicile certificate will be considered for a hawking licence, only one member from each family will allowed hawking. It also allows the sale of pre-cooked food on streets, after the high court prohibited roadside cooking. The policy classifies hawkers into three categories — mobile hawker, stationery hawker and permanent hawkers.