Hawkers, NGOs demand inclusion in land use maps

While residents of Pali Hill, Colaba and Dadar are up in arms against the BMC's idea to carve out hawking zones in their areas, civil society groups and trade unions have slammed the civic body for ignoring the hawkers in the draft Development Plan.

A dozen of such citizen groups - Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action - and a couple of hawkers' unions have drawn up a slew of suggestions and objections to the draft DP. They will be submitting them to the civic authorities on Saturday after a protest at Azad Maidan.

Aravind Unni of YUVA, says that schedule one of the Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act of 2014 requires the Development Plan to reflect vending zones based on a "plan for street vending" prepared by the local authority.
Unni said, "Only few of the existing natural markets were mapped in the existing land use maps which must be updated. We will demand that the DP must include data on street vendors based on surveys by town vending committee, BMC and other comparative studies."

Other suggestions include that the DP should formulate spatial planning norms as required by the Act, and the method must be explained in DP. "Based on a TISS & YUVA survey conducted in 1998, a norm of 2.2 square meters per vendor was suggested to the MCGM during the stakeholder consultations," Unni said.
Proposed land use plans must designate all streets with "natural markets" as "market streets" and provide "vending friendly pavements" on all of them. These streets must be equipped with support infrastructure for street vending.

"Ideally, there should be separate guidelines for "vending friendly pavements" with sectional views showing pedestrian paths, vending areas, carriageways, which must be shown for different streetswidths in the DCR manual," Unni said.

The groups also suggest the land use plan must designate vending zones based on the planning norms so that all existing street vendors and up to two-and-a-half percent of the population of every scale of planning unit areaccommodated into it.

The act requires the planning authority to plan for (according to the city's projected population of 13.95 million in 2034) at least 311,059 street vendors.

Syed Haider Imam, general secretary, AITUC hawkers' union, said that the DP has not been framed in accordance with the central Act.

"Public toilets, resting rooms, storage areas, drinking water facilities, waste disposal, for street vending must be provided on all market streets and close to all vending zones. These must be shown in the proposed land use maps," said Imam.

The groups would also demand all connector streets near major transit nodes must be declared as market streets and vending friendly pavements must be provided for them. A demand forprovision of changing rooms and creches at walking distances from every market street or vending zone for women vendors will also be put up.

"The DP should identify and allot areas for weekly markets according to the National Building Code (NBCI) norms of 1-2 areas of 400 square meters for every planning sector, that can accommodate at least 300-400 vendors," Unni said, adding, "The DPdoes not even mention the number of hawkers we have, the survey that has been carried out, the committee findings and report on hawkers constituted in 2013.

He added, "There was a space to plan innovatively to accommodate more hawkers in the city, but all that we are doing is that developing markets into malls."