‘Smart carts’, cards with GPS for vendors in north Delhi

North civic body introduces initiative to facilitate organised hawking in the city

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation is set to release a prototype of a ‘smart cart’ to benefit street vendors and to facilitate organised hawking zones in the city. The civic body will also issue GPS-enabled smart cards to vendors to keep track of licensed vendors and to prevent encroachments.

To do away with the problem of unlicensed vending across the city, the North Corporation has proposed that an online application be opened for the street vendors, where they can register themselves by paying a one-time licensing fee.

The Standing Committee Chairperson of the civic body, Tilak Raj Kataria, said smart cards will be issued after proper registration of vendors is conducted. These cards will have their names, photographs and other details like their vending zone, where they can operate and the type of business they have registered for. The cards will also help ensure that the space is used by the registered vendor and not rented out.

Common design

“Once we have issued these cards to them, we will sign them up for a common design of the handcarts that they can invest in, to give extra mileage to their business. Though the prototype is yet to be finalised, the idea is to make street vendors businessmen. They will no longer be called street-vendors but owners of shops-on-wheels,” said Mr. Kataria.

The smart cards issued to registered vendors will also be linked to their Aadhaar cards and will be GPS-enabled to track violations, he said.

The carts, on the other hand, are likely to be fit with features such as refrigerators to help keep fruits and vegetables fresh for extended periods, overhead solar panels that can power the fridge and lights on the cart, and umbrellas to shield them and their produce from the elements.

“I had gone to Faridabad and saw that in certain vending zones handcarts fitted with refrigerators were being used by the street vendors. That is when it struck me that if this can be developed in Faridabad, we can surely use it in Delhi,” said Mr. Kataria.

Financial help

The proposal was floated in the first meeting of the Standing Committee of the north corporation on Friday. The chairperson also suggested that to financially help the vendors, the civic body will bear part of the expenses of the cart, and will also consider roping in banks to provide vendors low-interest loans.

The idea, however, has not gone down well with the Opposition, which said that this will put unnecessary financial burden on an already debt-ridden corporation.

Mukesh Goel, leader of Congress in the North body, asked how the municipality will fund smart cards and payments for these ‘smart carts’ when it does not even have the money to buy brooms and pay its staff.

“This is like real life Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne . On the one hand you are grappling with funds to even start basic work in wards, and on the other you are dreaming of initiating such far-fetched projects. If the BJP has so much money then why is the sanitation work and dengue, chikungunya control work suffering,” said Mr. Goel. Recent surveys show there are nearly two lakh street vendors operating in the city.