Indian Express 25.05.2010
More no-hawking zones likely in new civic policy
Pupul Chatterjee Tags : corporation, no hawking zones, civic policy Posted: Tue May 25 2010, 04:15 hrs
Pune: As part of the new hawking policy of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) likely to be implemented in about a month, the number of ‘No Hawking Zones’ in the city may go up.Also, hawkers of the city will no longer need to obtain licences- just being registered will be enough for them. However, they will have to have a minimum of 15 years of residence in Maharashtra to register themselves. The city now has 10,206 registered hawkers and of them about 3,000 have licences.
At present there are about 30 roads in the city that have been declared as ‘No Hawking Zones’. These include JM road, Pune-Bombay Road, Senapati Bapat Marg, Fergusson College Road, Karve Road, Shastri Road and others.
According to Pravin Ashtikar, deputy commissioner (Special), the city within the PMC limits will be divided into three kind of zones, as opposed to the present two-zone system of hawking. “Now we will have Hawking Zone 1 which will be only for the stationary hawkers, Hawking Zone 2 for both stationary and mobile hawkers, and the No Hawking Zone. However the areas for each of them are yet to be identified,” said Ashtikar.
He further added that based on the model suggested by the state government, new bye-laws are being added to the existing Pune Hawking Policy of 2007 and the final draft was ready and will be sent to the law committee within a week, after which it will be presented to the general body and then to the state government for final approval. The implementation of the new policy will take at least a month.
Street Vendors face eviction under the section 283 of the IPC (danger or obstruction in public way or the line of navigation) and under section 34 of the Police Act.
Decentralising the entire process is the main focus of the PMC now. For this, apart from the Town Vending Committee that is already there, two new bodies – Prabhat Pheriwala Committee and Prabhat Pheriwala Technical Committee will be formed, apart from a committee for the rehabilitation of the hawkers.
Till date, the PMC has rehabilitated about 77 hawkers in and around the Pune Railway Station and 24 in the Zila Parishad area. Another 1,072 hawkers have been identified for rehabilitation. Some of the major areas that have been earmarked for rehabilitating vendors from the No Hawking Zones include Baner, Kharadi, Parwati, Wadgaon Sheri and Wadgaon BK.
