16,000 hawkers to get eligibility certificates from November end

This picture has been used for representation purpose only

Almost five years after the Hawkers Policy came into effect, the BMC plans to issue eligibility certificates to vendors. Of the 89,000 applications they received, the civic body has finalised only 16,000 after verifying their documents in the first phase of scrutiny. However, civic officials said they will provide certificates to more hawkers if they manage to submit the relevant documents during further scrutiny.

The eligibility certificates, which would also be licenced, will mention details like the hawker's name, the commodity to be sold, location and the pitch number (one that identifies the hawker's zone), which needs to be renewed every month.

The process of issuing fresh licenses to the hawkers started after the Hawkers Policy came into force and a survey was conducted about five years ago. The BMC had then given out forms to about 1.25 lakh hawkers, of which only 89,000 managed to submit relevant documents. After the first level of scrutiny, the civic body finalised about 20 per cent of that (16,000) for the certificates.

Civic sources further revealed that most of the pitches had been finalised but they were yet to allot hawkers their individual spaces. This would be done at ward level. However, the BMC was yet to look into the issue of whether some hawkers would be shifted to new places.

This picture has been used for representation purpose only

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a civic official said, "Even though phase I of scrutinising the hawkers and identifying zones have been completed, there are some on-ground problems that need to be addressed. If not the entire city but we will at least start to implement the policy in a couple of areas and see what's the response like. Also some hawkers don't want to shift to the places that have been assigned to them. We need to look into that as well."

Sharad Bande, superintendent of the licence department said, "We have finalised the number of hawkers who would get the certificates and also put up the list online. We aim to start distributing the certificates before the end of this month."

89K
Total No. of applications the BMC received

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