A long-pending demand of street vendors to have a designated hawking place in the city has been met with the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) making arrangements to accommodate them in about one acre land near the service bus stand. According to Mayor Harinath, facilities have now been created for 210 street vendors and arrangements are being made to accommodate another 100 vendors in the same place. In addition to inter-locking tiles, the ground drinking water facility has been provided. The vendors can use the nearby public toilet facility. The corporation has issued identity cards to 210 street vendors, he said. The Mayor said that the identity card holding vendors have begun registering with the corporation which was allotting them numbers and they will have to sit in the number marked in the area reserved. Only such vendors having an identity card and who have registered with the corporation will be accommodated in the hawking place. The civic body will give the vendors a week’s time to shift from the State Bank of India bus terminus premises and the Central Market area to shift. The corporation will begin evicting the vendors from the roadside after a week. The corporation will not collect any fee from the vendors, he said.
The Mayor said that the corporation will have a 10-member team exclusively to evict street vendors in the city in the coming days as a separate facility for them now has been made. The civic body has invited bids for awarding the contract of evicting.
Sunil Kumar Bajal, honorary president, Dakshina Kannada Street Vendors’ Association, said that the association is happy with the facility. But the civic body will have to issue identity cards to 350 more vendors. The place reserved now is ideal for vendors and centrally located. He said that the civic body will have to build a roof at the place to enable the vendors to trade in rainy season.
The honorary president said that once the vendors occupied it will be like a daily “santhe” in the city with consumables availing under one roof.
