Spelling relief for dabbawalas, the BMC has decided to keep the tiffin suppliers out of the category of hawkers to be covered by the Street Vendors' (protection of livelihood and regulation of street vending) Act, 2014.
This means that the more than 5,000 dabbawalas that serve around 2.5 lakh customers in the city, cannot be classified as vendors as per the new policy.
A delegation of dabbawalas had last month called on civic officials to know the corporation's stand on including the tiffin suppliers in the list of vendors. Dabbawalas' nature of work requires them to travel within the jurisdictions of more than one municipal corporation. So, their association wanted to know which civic body to approach for procuring licenses. Another query the tiffin suppliers had was related to the issuing of licenses by the BMC to family members. The civic body has maintained that it will allot vending licenses to only one member in a family. The vendors had raised concerns given that several dabbawalas have more than one person in the family working in the business.
"Yes, their representatives had come to me with certain queries. We have considered the same and decided to exclude them from the list of vendors to be covered while implementing the Act," said additional municipal commissioner Mohan Adtani said.
Adtani added that dabbawalas work during certain hours in a day and that too mostly on platforms of railway stations. "They don't keep occupying public places outside stations. Besides, it is not just one corporation under whose jurisdiction they work. Their businesses don't cause any nuisance to citizens, rather they are quintessential example of proper management. Hence, we have decided to exclude them from the list of vendors to be covered under the hawkers' policy," said Adtani.
Raghunath Medage, president, Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers' Association, welcomed the BMC move. "We welcome the corporation's decision to exclude our men from the implementation of the policy. But not all dabbawalas have all their family members working in our profession. There are unemployed men in our families too. We make hardly Rs 9,000 to Rs 10,000 per month which doesn't suffice. Hence, there should be no hindrance in allotting hawking licenses to any relative of members of our association in case the unemployed kin wants to take up a non-dabbawala job," Medage said.
"We are almost ready with a draft of the scheme. The only doubt we have is about the definition of 'existing hawkers'. We have sought the advocate general's opinion on that," Adtani said. The draft is supposed to be approved by state government before it is executed.
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