The town-vending committee of the Dhanbad Municipal Corporation met under the chairmanship of assistant municipal commissioner, Rajesh Kumar Singh, on Friday to discuss the plight of street vendors, among other issues.

The meeting discussed the mid-term survey to identify the street vendors and a simultaneous survey being carried out by the DMC to identify all vendors, under the PM Street Vendors Atma Nirbhar Nidhi Yojna.

The city mission manager of the National Urban Livelihood Mission, Santosh Singh, the traffic deputy superintendent of police, Vinod Kumar, and bank managers present in the meeting.

They also discussed the construction of vending zones.

Santosh Singh told The Telegraph Online, “We explained the nitty gritties to obtain loans under the scheme to the street vendors in the meeting. All the doubts of the town-vending committee were clarified by the bank managers.”

“The letter of recommendation issued by the town-vending committee members or an urban-local body is sufficient to verify the eligibility of the street vendor for the loan,” said Singh.

Eleven teams, comprising town administrators, supervisors and self-help group members have been constituted to carry out both the survey to identify more vendors, along with the 3,978 vendors identified by DMC in 2018 across 55 wards of Dhanbad spread over five circles, comprising Jharia, Dhanbad, Sindri, Katras and Chhatand.

Sanjeev Singh, a street vendor who also attended the meeting as a town-vending committee member said, “The meeting was quite informative as we clarified our doubts from the bank officials.”

“The scheme if implemented in the right manner will be quite beneficial for all the street vendors. We also raised other issues like regular eviction by the police and the construction of vending zones” said Singh.

He said they had been informed that the detailed project report for the construction of a four-storeyed vending-zone at Hirapur has been made.

In 2018, the DMC identified 12 sites to develop vending zones but they were not finalised because no-objection certificates were not obtained from a majority of the respective departments to which the land belonged.