Digital push to pull up illegal hawkers in Jamshedpur

Drive to ensure only licensed vendors operate, and to keep check on food quality

Street vendors in Sakchi, Jamshedpur, on Thursday.

The city civic body will digitise licensed street vendor’s records to end the perennial problem of traffic congestion and to ensure quality of food dished out in commercial hubs.

More than 4,000 licensed street vendors in commercial hubs of the city will have smart chip cards containing the biometric data and all details of the licence holder including name, age, address, contact number, licence number and photograph.

Hawkers selling food will need to have the food safety licence from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which is issued by district civil surgeon.

“We would be issuing tender to a private agency for making the smart chip card for the vendors soon based on the survey record,” said Vishal Kumar, city mission manager, Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC). “It will help us in knowing the locations where these vendors put up their stalls. The private agency will put in the data. We will also ask vendors to enter their details at our office in the next few weeks. We hope to have the smart chip cards ready by April and implement it from then.”

He said the move will help enforcement squads take action against illegal vendors.

“Our enforcement squad will have the QR code scanner machine and during special drive against illegal vendors we will scan the smart chip cards to get entire details,” Kumar said. “If the vendors are found putting their stalls in a location other than the one in which they are allotted we will confiscate their goods and levy fines. We hope that after regularisation of vendors the problem of squatting on roads leading to traffic congestion would be curbed to a great extent.”

Now, authorised vendors have hard (paper) copies of their authorisation and it is often difficult for the enforcement squad to verify the details because the vendors make other people man the stalls. “It (digitisation) would make our task easier to know if they have the mandatory FSSAI license which is renewed annually by the district health department and is aimed at curbing sale of adulterated and poor quality food,” said the JNAC city mission manager.

There are dedicated vending zones in Golmuri, Sidhgora, Kadma and Bistupur but vendors often prefer to squat by roads to attract customers.