A meeting of the Town Vending Committee was held today to discuss the issue of survey of Ghaziabad vendors without prior consent of the committee. The meeting was chaired by Col Tejendra Pal Tyagi, a committee member and also the chairman of the RWA Federation Ghaziabad.
Tyagi said the survey clearly violated the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act of 2014. The government had appointed a private company, West Biotech Private Limited, to conduct the survey. It lacks the knowledge about the ground realities of the vendors. It has also been alleged that some of the surveyors were collecting money from the vendors in lieu of getting them certified from the municipal committee.
The municipal commissioner, who is also the chairman of the Town Vending Committee, had spoken of meetings of the committee every 15 days. But no such meetings have been held in the last six months.
Suresh Koiri, the chairman of the local weekly markets, Om Prakash, the committee’s general secretary, and its coordinator, Veer Pal, complained that the municipality rarely listened to their demands, and even if they did, no action followed. Koiri also alleged that the money and time spent in the survey was way over what was required.
The committee members have put forward a list of demands:
- Monthly meeting of the committee to be convened regularly
- Identity cards to be issued to the committee members immediately
- The committee to be provided with an independent room and an executive in the municipal complex under Section 25 of the 2014 Act
- Surveys of street vendors to be conducted with the consent of the committee
- Police and self-appointed leaders must be stopped from collecting payments from vendors in the markets
- Arrangement of mobile toilets and drinking water in the local market.
The committee threatened to go to court against the municipality and the government if their demands – which they claim are legitimate -- were not met within 15 days.
Pritam Lal, another member of the committee, opined that a city can’t be called well-planned unless its vendors are organised. He added, the Indirapuram vendors must be given an organised hawking space and not completely driven out. Street vendors must be relocated with their consent to other places. Any action to the contrary will be viewed as a gross violation of the Town Vending Act, 2014, enacted for their relocation and protection.