Educating Officials on the Street Vendor Act 2014

The rampant manner in which the vendors are being mistreated has sent shivers down our spine. There seems to be a violation of the protections of the Street Vendors act.

In a state that is impoverished due to opportunities of livelihood and lack of industries, a common way of earning an honest  subsistence is to offer cheap goods and services along the streets where  the common people move about. 

These street vendors have a very tough life, especially the vegetable and fruit vendors who have to go to the wholesale market very early in the morning, buy the goods, and then come to the place where they are doing vending.

Waiting for the trainees to arrive at the venue

With the gross violations of the street vendors act that have been happening in recent days, we felt it was important to provide an in-depth training and orientation to the Executive Officers and the City Mission Managers connected with the Patna Municipality. 

Aashray Abhiyan had to put in a lot of effort to make this happen, even so such training and sensitization of the public servants does not seem to be on the agenda of the State Government.

When we reached the venue, the trainees were not there, and after a long wait, it looked as if the training would not happen.  Time is not at all important for officials; they come at their own sweet time and keep everyone waiting.  Eventually the Assistant Municipal Commissioner – AMC appeared; and after a while the CMM’s joined the meeting.

Discussion with Municipal Officer

Two Powerpoint presentations were prepared by Dorothy and Advocate Prashant Kumar of Patna High Court.  When the presentation began, it was felt  that these government officials are not at all open to learning about the provisions of the Act.

 In spite of this attitude, we went ahead with our presentation, giving them each a copy of the Street Vendors Act 2014. We hope that the session proved to be at least a motivation for them to study the Street Vendors Act, and to realize how many of their official  actions are actually unlawful.

Presentation on the Street Vendors' Act 2014

Aashray Abhiyan demanded that another session should be organized a little later for other officials  who had missed this opportunity, due to election preparation duty.