The awakening of BBMP..
Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner K. Jairaj on Tuesday directed the health officials of south zone to evict all unauthorized pavement vendors. During an inspection of Banashankari, Srinivasnagar and other areas coming under the south zone, the Commissioner noticed that there were several roadside vendors selling cut-fruits and other food items. Reports Hindu
With this great awakening is Mr. Commissioner trying to say that the officials should take this up as a drive and not as routine? Or do they do these inspections only when the commissioner visits? Or is it in the wake of Supreme Courts recent order to ban the cooking of food at stalls along the roadside in the Country Capital?
My feeling is that we have to get into action the minute it starts. It will be very difficult later to clean. In so many places I have seen that street vendors have constructed solid buildings. Since they have a decent business place they will have a decent size family too. Now if you ask him to go, what will the family do?
In every area, they need to make it mandatory that there will be some bazaar like area with small sized stores and necessary facilities. Then strictly prohibit the use of footpaths for such stalls. Otherwise we will end up worrying more about hungry people than footpaths.
Our government needs to be proactive. In our area I see that many well off individual house owners have kind of encroached the footpaths. They have either made it a personal garden or extended the gate for their new Innova Parking area. If well educated people do this, I wouldn’t blame the street vendors.
I have a differing view on this
Agreed that these stalls are unauthorised, they cause great inconvenience to pavement users, food is unhygienic, but looking at is from the other side, these stalls provide a honorable livelihood avenue for someone who is not a Techie/ professional. They also provide affordable food to the drivers/ daily wage workers etc who cannot afford to eat at restaurants
It is all about coexisting with other sections of society
If you take away the honorable avenue, they might get pushed into world of crime. Can we deal with civil strife, think about it
I am with Dave here… Merely saying take these vendors off the pavements or even just doing so does not solve anything. You need to first make an alternative for those people so they can continue to earn a living.
Similar thing happened few weeks ago in Koramangala, near the BDA complex where the vendors on the pavements were asked to stay off it and find other roads. This one was a one time stunt lasting 2 days due to a visiting official… the chat wallah was cursing that he would lose his regular customers and that new ones won’t be able to spot him as he was not in a prominent place anymore.
The most horrifying thing that I see – are food vendors on the footpaths that contain the large open sewage drains that Bangalore still has. Its outrageous that people are exposed to such risks (eg: Chat guy near the Indiranagar BDA complex, towards the main road… another one near the Yo China in Koramangala, even some vegetable vendors selling greens/soppu next to these sewage canals)
This brings us to another topic altogether… Why does Bangalore still have these large open sewage drains??? There are even some slums that reside on the banks of these rivers of piss and poo. Its saddening and depressing.
The BBMP is soundly asleep.