Only 44% vendors registered so far, MC blames it on exodus

Ludhiana: The MC officials could register only 44 % of the street vendors against the total number of vendors surveyed by the civic body almost two years back through the registration programme. The officials blamed exodus of migrant workers from the city during lockdown for lesser registration and claimed that they were still adding names to the list. Meanwhile, the officials are also planning for vending zones and for that designs and estimates are being prepared.
In June, the civic body officials had given time to the vendors for registration. As of now almost 8,500 vendors came for the registration while the survey that was conducted by the civic body had come out with a total 19,000 street vendors. In the past two months many migrants have returned to their homes during lockdown period due to which most of those who were identified during survey are not here. The officials claimed now they are taking help from the councillors for getting the vendors registered with the civic body. Only those vendors will be registered whose names are there in the survey list.
Zonal commissioner Neeraj Jain said, “The registration rate is low due to coronavirus and exodus of migrants from city. Many are coming back, so we have kept registration open for the vendors.” He said they had sent the proposal of establishing vending zones in the city to be tabled in the MC general house meeting, but the meeting had not been scheduled as of now.
Meanwhile, under Street Vendors Atam Nirbhar Scheme the street vendors will also get Rs 10,000 as loan amount to resume their business. This scheme has been introduced by the Union government for helping the street vendors whose business was disturbed during the pandemic. The vendors who will be registered with MC will be able to avail this loan at 7% interest rate. In this regard the civic officials also conducted a meeting with members of the town vending committee on Friday evening and they had been assured that vending zones would be established shortly.
The matter of vending zones has been hanging fire for a long time and even after conducting a survey around two years back the civic body officials could not finalise the vending zones.