Hawkers along College Street, who have occupied the pavement opposite Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, have hardly left any space for pedestrians to walk, a councillor said at the civic house on Saturday.
Suparna Dutta, the councillor of Ward 40, urged the civic authorities to rein in the hawkers and limit them within a certain portion of the footpath.
Dutta said that the hawkers, most of whom run eateries, have large plastic sheets hanging over the stalls.
The hawkers have said that since there is no overhead shed they have no option but to use plastic. They declined an offer to use umbrellas by saying that the umbrellas would not protect the food when it rains.
Mayoral council member Debasish Kumar, who is also the co-convenor of the town vending committee of Kolkata, promised to raise the issue in the committee's meeting.
The committee is empowered by the central Act — The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014 — to regulate hawkers in a town or city. Each town or city must have its own committee.
Kumar added that a food stall on a pavement cannot occupy more than 18sqft.
"The footpath opposite the boundary walls of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, along College Street has hawkers occupying a large portion of the pavement. There is hardly any space to walk," Dutta said on Saturday.
"The hawkers also have large plastic sheets and they spoke about their inability to remove the sheets since they have no overhead sheds," she said.
The councillor said Shyamacharan De Street, adjacent to College Street, also faced the same problem. She also highlighted how some books stalls in the College Street area have encroached upon on large portions of the pavements.
Dutta sought the CMC's intervention and demanded that stalls with overhead sheds be allowed there like in Gariahat.
The CMC has allowed the construction of overhead sheds above the stalls of hawkers after the use of plastic was banned.
Many hawkers in Gariahat have erected these sheds and some of them have stopped using plastic sheets.
Hawkers' stalls in front of Medical College Hospital. Sanat Kr Sinha
Local residents say stretches of pavements in Gariahat now look far better than how they looked when the plastic sheets were hung overhead.
Kumar, the mayoral council member who is also in charge of hawker-related matters, said one problem with the pavements in College Street and adjacent roads was the narrow footpaths.
"The footpaths are so narrow that running a business on the pavement after leaving two-thirds of the width to pedestrians becomes difficult. But we have to find a solution to this," Kumar said.
A set of rules framed by the state government for hawkers has said that hawkers cannot sit on more than one-third of the width of a pavement; a stall or any part of it cannot encroach upon a road; no stall can be set up facing a road and plastic sheets cannot be used in a stall.