Aurangabad:
The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) commissioner Abhijeet Chaudhari today held an emergency meeting with the hawkers and relieved them from action till the declaration of a Hawkers Zone.
As reported earlier, the Hawkers union has today announced parking their handcarts, in front of the official residence of the civic chief ‘Jalshri’ for want of the hawkers' zone and preventing action against them.
This created sensation and the civic chief called an urgent meeting in presence of the head of the AMC’s concerned section.
The hawkers and street vendors demanded action against civic authorities for taking action against them and urged returning of their seized materials and valuables. They also demanded compensation for their losses. The meeting was attended by Sanjay Gaikwad, Walmik Sonawane, Raju Hiwrale, Abhishek Bankar, Vijay Rojekar, Shaikh Isaak, Dilip Bavane and other office-bearers.
The civic chief said that it is true that many issues will be resolved with the allocation of a dedicated zone to the hawkers. The work to constitute the Hawkers Zone Committee is underway. It will have AMC officers, representatives of street vendors, police and RTO. The AMC has given a letter to the Labour Officer to conduct the election of the committee. All the related departments will also have to unite with the AMC to resolve the issue, said Chaudhari to them.
The work of drafting and framing hawkers' policy is going on for the past five years. There are registered 14,500 handcarts and the same number of handcarts are unregistered. They demanded to provide AMC land to them in the vicinity of the commercial markets of the city to earn their livelihoods.
Earlier, under the guidance of the Shahid Bhagatsingh Hawkers union president Abhay Taksal, the hawkers had conducted agitations and demonstrations many times, but when nothing worked out, they announced of parking their handcarts in front of the civic chief’s residence.