GHMC surveying areas for allocating hawker zones

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has started implementing street vending policy for which officials are surveying several areas to decide and allocate dedicated vending zones. As many as 22,000 hawkers have been identified and given identity cards.Officials are mulling to implement the policy throughout the city after identifying the vending zones and hawkers.

According to GHMC, there are 24,580 vendors in the city out of which 22, 324 vendors have got their id cards. Among them, 204 members have received bank loan amounts to the tune of Rs 90 lakh as part of central government MUDRA scheme.GHMC initially identified 135 hawker zones the city, in which 24 are no vending zones while 77 are always vending zones and 34 are partial vending zones. Officials set up 30 town vending committees in the city. Officials are terming always vending zones as green zones, partial vending zones as amber zones and no vending zone as the red zone.

Officials stated that 24,580 identified vendors details have been uploaded in Telangana mepma website. These vendors have also been entitled to PMSBY, PMJJBY, and APY schemes. Common interest groups have also been formed to protect the street vendors and to avoid inconvenience to the residents. A Town vending committee that consists of 20 percent government officials, 40 percent street vendors and 20 percent of NGO members would be formed in every circle.

With the cooperation of traffic, revenue and labor departments, officials are implementing the policy successfully and trying to expand it to the whole city. They also stated that GHMC is ahead of other metro cities in the country in implementing the policy.