Regularisation of street vendors only after forming appellate authority

The subject was discussed at a recent meeting in Ripon Building, in which senior officials from the Corporation and city police took part. “The town vending committees of respective zones are empowered to decide on the allocation of shops to street vendors.

If a vendor wants to appeal against the allocation or request another place, he has no option. Also, the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vendors) Act mandates the constitution of the appellate authority,” said a Chennai Corporation official, who had attended the meeting.

However, the civic body had already constituted town vendors’ committees that comprise zonal executive engineers of the Corporation as chairman, local police and representatives from street vendors as members. It is also learnt that the civic body completed demarcating vending and non-vending zonesin the city.

During the meeting, the Chennai Corporation directed zonal executive engineers to delay the relocation of street vendors to vending zones from non-vending zones until the formation of the appellate authority, the official added. Refusing to disclose the actual number of street vendors who would be shifted to vending zones, the official explained that the existing vendors would be given priority.

“If sufficient space is not available, we shift some street vendors to other parts,” he said. Each of the 15 zones now has around 2,000 to 3,000 vending zones on an average. The vending zones are the streets and roads where street vending would be allowed by collecting charges from the vendors. As per the Street Vending Act, town vending committees of respective zones would decide on the number of vendors to be permitted on roads, factoring the vehicle and pedestrian movements.

Vending would be banned on streets that are three to five metres wide, while in the case of roads with a width of five to six metres, vending might be allowed on one side of the road. On the roads with 10 metres width, vending would be allowed on both sides. Street vending would not be allowed in ASI notified sites.