JUTBC, CPI draw attention on plight of street vendors
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, April 21 2022:
All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), Manipur State Committee (MSC) has submitted a memorandum to Governor La Ganesan requesting him to look into the issues faced by street vendors of the state and take appropriate action.
As per the memorandum signed by AITUC MSC general secretary L Sotinkumar, Khwairamband Bazar is the main market of the state where women vendors belonging to weaker sections of the society from both hills and valley region come to earn some money for their family.
For more than past 20 years, these women have been struggling to meet both ends meet in and around Khwairamband while police and Imphal Municipal Corporation (IMC) have been taking bribes and collecting illegal tax from them, it alleged, and lamented that government authorities repeatedly harass these vendors by terming them as illegal traders.
AITUC MSC pointed out that as per the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, street vendors must be protected when they are evicted or relocated.
However, since the Act has been not implemented in the state, there are no clear non-vending zones and hawkers living in the city are carrying out all the vending activities.
As per the provision of Manipur Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Rules, 2016, government authorities should have formed Town Vending Committee but is yet to materialise.
According to the Section 38 of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 as soon as the Act is enforced, state government should launch a scheme in connection with it within six months, but no such schemes have been framed, it observed.
AITUC MSC demanded that a Town Vending Committee be established; launch scheme under the 2014 Act; street vendors be identified and provided a licence/identity card along with designating non-vending and vending areas.
The vacant first floors of Ima Markets should be utilised to accommodate the street vendors to ease their problems, the representation maintained and urged the Governor to closely look into the matter and bring out a resolution to the problem.
Meanwhile, CPI Manipur State Council has asserted that forcibly evicting women street vendors will not solve their problems.
In a release by CPI MSC assistant secretary M Joykumar Luwang mentioned that the party cannot remain silent to either violent eviction of women street vendors from Khwairamband Bazar or not allowing them to even sit at the temporary market.
These women vendors are just striving to generate income for their poor families.
Government must protect these street vendors and rehabilitate them after conducting a survey.
The authority's policy of violently evicting them instead of resolving their issues will not lead to anything good.
Hence, the state government must hold a special cabinet meeting or special assembly session to resolve the problems of street vendors, it further demanded.