With the politicians batting for street vendors and criticising the local authorities for evicting them, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) has made it clear that it will adopt the norms of “one vendor per family” as stipulated by the law.
The MCC recently launched a drive to evict street vendors – mostly food vendors - from the core zones as there were complaints of laxity in maintaining hygiene apart from overrunning the city. However, only those in the core zones have been evicted so far and vendors continue to function in residential areas of the city.
However, the eviction drive has drawn flak from the politicians and the N.R. Constituency MLA Tanvir Sait said the MCC should make alternative arrangements and issue notice to the vendors before evicting them. He also wanted the MCC to identify hawkers’ zone and food courts in all the wards of the corporation.
MCC Commissioner C.G. Betsurmath has pointed out that not even one per cent of the vendors functioning in the city have been evicted and only those who had put up semi-permanent or permanent structures in the core area of the city, and those not adhering to hygiene norms were evicted. “We are not against the vendors and will facilitate them to earn their living. But we will follow the norm of one vendor per family as stipulated by the law provided the family has no other source of income”, said Mr. Betsurmath.
He said there are instances of every member of the vendor family getting into the business of vending besides having other sources of income.
There are nearly 5,000 street vendors operating in the city most of whom deal with fast food and consequent to the MCC drive they staged a dharna last week.
Meanwhile a meeting of the vendors and the local authorities is slated for Monday and the MCC has already constituted panels for each ward of the city which will identify hawking zones in that particular ward where the vendors can operate. Though the MCC has promised that vendors can start operating from June 2 in the designated areas, there are apprehensions about the vendors complying with the directives. For, similar exercise in the past did not yield result as vendors refused to relocate to areas identified by the corporation on the grounds that they were not commercially viable.
We are not against the vendors and will facilitate them to earn their living. But we will follow the norm of one vendor per family as stipulated by the law provided the family has no other source of income. There are instances of every member of the vendor family getting into the business of vending, besides having other sources of income.
C.G. Betsurmath
MCC Commissioner
