Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is set to distribute 8,500 vending certificates to hawkers who have already enrolled with the civic body as bonafide traders in the city’s major hawking zones before the Pujas. In the first phase, KMC will start distributing vending certificates in major hawking hubs like New Market, Hatibagan, and Gariahat from Aug 16. The certificate will be issued for a year and will be renewed annually. This decision was made at the meeting of the town vending committee at the civic headquarters on Wednesday. According to a KMC vending committee member, the exercise of offering vending certificates aims at restricting hawkers who have encroached on the carriageways or a significant portion of pavements. “We have decided to start distributing vending certificates to genuine hawkers to identify and remove those who have been illegally occupying carriageways and pavements,” said the town vending committee member.At the same time, a unanimous decision was made to push back a section of hawkers who have taken over carriageways. KMC and the police will need to conduct a joint drive to free the carriageways and car parking lots of hawkers’ encroachment in the New Market area. According to a KMC official, the certificates will be issued to around 59,000 hawkers who applied in 2015 for a hawker’s identity card, enabling them to register as bonafide hawkers. However, according to a civic official, the hawker population has already reached the 3,00,000 mark. “It is an uphill task to issue vending certificates to all hawkers at once. But those who haven’t applied so far will be given an opportunity to apply for enrolment in the future after the completion of the distribution of vending certificates. However, it will be a continuous process and may take years. The town vending committee will need to keep a vigil on new encroachments of carriageways or entire pavements, as that will certainly endanger the life of a pedestrian,” said a member of the committee.“We don’t want to evict hawkers. But we need to restrict rampant encroachment of carriageways by a section of the hawkers who don’t want to abide by rules. We have recommended the distribution of a vending certificate to those who have been doing business without infringing hawking rules,” said Debasish Das, a member of the town vending committee who attended the meeting as a hawker representative.
