- Administration helpless, no concrete policy
Nagpur. The encroachers have become a canker. The administration has become helpless in front of them. For decades, the city administration has not been able to formulate a concrete policy for the city hawkers. The Hawkers Zone has died on paper. Now it is not even discussed. The townspeople are suffering the consequences. There is not a single market area or road in the city where footpaths are not occupied by encroachers. The footpath is made for pedestrians, but its use has become a permanent place for encroachers, dumps and vendors.
Encroachment eradication squads continue to take action, but the effect of their action is only for an hour or two. The squad passes here and is captured again. The pavement of the city has become the permanent place of hawkers, it will not be an exaggeration to say. Since the Corona period, there is a 3-4 times increase in the number of vendors in the footpaths. There are many such roads where till two years ago only a few handcarts and dumplings were seen on the pavement, but today the market has started on the same roads.
not even leaving the settlements
Leave aside the market areas. The main roads and footpaths of many residential settlements have been occupied by encroachers. Areas adjacent to the city are developing. Cement roads are being built and wide footpaths are also being made. The condition is that as soon as the road work is completed, a large number of people selling food carts, vegetables, fruits and other items are being occupied on the edges.
Looks like they are just waiting for the road or footpath to be built. In such residential areas, people have started facing problems due to these encroachers. Within the city, only after 8 o’clock in the morning, the sidewalks are occupied by vegetable, breakfast and tea stalls, which remain till late at night. Citizens do not get a place to walk on the footpath. At the same time, the same situation is happening in new residential areas as well.
The shop also decorates
In the market areas, shopkeepers and big showrooms also decorate the goods on the sidewalk in front of their shop. At some places, second hand two wheeler and four wheeler vendors are decorating shops on the footpath itself. The clothes people are seen decorating the whole shop outside. They feel that the pavement in front of their shop is owned by them. At the same time, footpaths have become parking spots in the market area all over the city. Parking of two wheelers and four wheelers is done on the footpath in front of some hotels and hospitals. No action is taken against such people.
There are also allegations of collusion
Sources say that in some areas, action is not taken only because there is a setting from the commanders of the concerned department and the police of the area. In the middle of Bajajnagar Chowk to Laxminagar Chowk, from noon every day, dozens of handcarts of Pav Bhaji of the same name occupy the pavement together. In front of them, some panipuri-chaat stalls also freeze. All of them belong to Kachhipura township and have only one owner. It is said that by setting up with some corrupt personnel of the concerned department, it occupies the pavement here.
As if he had just bought the sidewalk. Similarly, there are many areas in the city where food stalls and handcarts are being decorated by putting chairs and tables on the sidewalks. From these, the setting is told from the recovering employees. Footpaths are made for pedestrians but shops are being decorated on it. In Bhopal, the capital of the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh, a place has been earmarked for hawkers in every area, but there is not even an attempt to make any such arrangement here.