A 56-year-old woman died on Thursday after the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) conducted a drive to evict street vendors from a ‘no-hawking zone’ in George Town on Thursday.
According to police, M. Krishnaveni had reportedly tried to protect her wares during the drive, which was carried out at the NSC Bose Road junction near the Godown Street. While she tried to run away from a Corporation official, carrying her wares, she collapsed on the road. Other vendors in the area rushed her to a hospital in Choolai, from were she was referred to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital where she was declared dead on arrival. The post-mortem will be done on Friday.
Following the incident, vendors staged a protest and blocked roads at George Town. V. Maheswaran, State General Secretary of the National Association of Street Vendors of India, said that the government should provide compensation to the family of the vendor.
D. Kumar, a street vendor, said: “More than a 1,000 women, many of whom are widows, are street vendors in this area. All of them possess identity cards too. But they do not have any rights,” he added. M. Muniamma, daughter-in-law of the deceased, said that they had lodged a complaint with the police about the high-handedness of the Corporation officials, who reportedly chased the elderly woman down a road. “The junior engineer [of the Corporation] has chased women vendors before, and seized their wares. We did not go to college. But we try our best to educate our children. We request a space on this road to protect our livelihood,” she added.
GCC officials said that the eviction was carried out only after the stretch was declared a no-hawking zone. However, the vendors claimed that they had been selling only at the end of the NSC Bose Road, where vending was allowed.
