Street vendors petition CM
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, May 20 2011:
Three different bodies today submitted a memorandum to the chief minister, O Ibobi Singh drawing his attention to the accommodation of street vendors, evicted from the roadside area surrounding Ima markets, to the first floor of the multi-storey market sheds.
In the joint memorandum of the three bodies, Roadside Vendors Welfare Association, Khwairamband Keithel, Manipur Keithel Phambi Apunba Lup and National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), said that as per a survey conducted by the Imphal Municipal Council, the number of unlicensed vendors sitting in the street in the beginning of 2010 was 3,882 .
The IMC authority had collected photographs of the street vendors with the promise to issue license to them which they are vending for the last 10 years.
They also doing their business in the elsewhere Purana Bazar, Lakshmi Market and New Market of Imphal city and included in the Memorandum of Understanding signed between street vendors, who include licensed and unlicensed vendors, and Manipur government.
Though the government has built separate vending zones for women street vendors which is praise worthy but the action of the Manipur government to evict them was completely arbitrary and unjustified, the memorandum lamented.
Asserting that the the first floor of the women market is laying vacant, the memorandum demanded that it should be immediately allocated to them.
The open space of the temporary market should also be developed in a market structure for street vendors, they further demanded.