Most hawkers in the Oberoi Grand arcade occupy more than a third of the width of the pavement, violating rules that mandate that two-thirds should be free for pedestrians, a survey by Kolkata’s town vending committee has found.
Debashis Kumar, a mayoral council member of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and the co-chairperson of the city’s town vending committee, said the survey also found that the people running the stalls were not the ones who had applied for the hawkers’ licence.
The state government had in 2015 announced that the civic body would give licences to hawkers and 59,000 hawkers had applied for the licence. The licences were not finally given as a central law came into effect soon after.
The committee’s findings show what many have suspected for years.
The hawking rules — framed by the state government on the basis of the central law — say no stall can occupy more than one-third of the width of a pavement. At least two-thirds must be free for pedestrians. These norms are routinely violated in Kolkata.
The town vending committee — made of hawker representatives, police officers, government officials, NGOs and elected representatives, among others — is the sole authority to take action against errant hawkers.
The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, a central act, has given the committee the power to penalise hawkers as well as take measures to protect their livelihood. Every town or city in the country must have its own vending committee.
Kumar said the KMC and the police would jointly visit the Oberoi Grand arcade and push back the hawkers. “I do not know whether we will be able to do this before Puja because the police may not be in a position to find time for this. Now they are too busy. But we want to push back the hawkers to one-third the width of the pavement as quickly as possible,” Kumar said.
“Those people who have not been recorded as hawkers in that space have to go,” he said.
However, conversations with hawker leaders on the vending committee suggested that this would be a difficult task and would be met with resistance from hawker unions.
“The survey found that there are many traders with stalls in the arcade who are not recorded as hawkers in the KMC’s books. Some are employees and some are running the stalls after taking the space from actual hawkers,” Kumar said.
Space on Kolkata’s footpaths is routinely sold or rented out, all illegally. The deals allegedly enjoy the blessings of the local police.
The Street Vendors Act, 2014, mentions that street vendors shall conduct business themselves or through their family members but they should not “transfer in any manner whatsoever, including rent, the certificate of vending or the place specified therein, to any other person”.
Some of the stalls are so big, they need multiple hands. A hawker leader said: “It is
not possible for a single person to run a stall there. Almost everyone hires an employee.”
The survey found there were about 80 hawkers on the small stretch and about
15 of them were sitting in front of shops at the arcade. The rest were sitting along the road.
It was decided at the town vending committee’s meeting on Wednesday that either the 15 hawkers would be accommodated between stalls towards the road or they will be relocated.
“There cannot be hawkers on both sides of a pavement. If this is allowed, pedestrians will not get two-thirds of the width of a pavement,” said a member of the committee.
The KMC has just begun the process of handing vending certificates to hawkers.