Corporation frames new bye-laws to regulate beach vendors

“We have already conducted two meetings with the Police department and Food Safety department officials and discussed bye-laws to be incorporated in the Chennai City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) Act, 1919. We are trying to complete framing the draft before the next hearing in February first week,” said a Chennai Corporation higher official.

The official claimed that Chennai is the only city in the country that has embarked in framing separate bye-laws for streamlining beach vendors and said that such bye-laws will demarcate vending and non-vending zones on the beach sands.

“Bye-laws will also have other regulations including the uniform height and size of the shops. Once the bye-laws are framed, we will pass a resolution requesting the state government to amend the CCMC Act. Police and Food Safety department had given some suggestions and we will include them before framing bye-laws,” the official added.

Meanwhile, the vendors on Marina Beach had demanded the civic body to consider their livelihood while framing bye-laws. “We are running shops here for nearly more than 40 years. We don’t have any other livelihood except the shops,” a member of the beach vending committee said.

Even though the court directed the civic body to provide opportunities to vendors to express their views, the committee member said that they were not invited to the meetings to discuss the bye-laws.

Recently, the civic body and Police department aligned more than 1,900 shops that were functioning in a haphazard manner on the 2.8 km long Marina beach. Hawkers, who were squatting near the tideline, had been removed and allocated shops near the service road.

However, it is learnt that the civic body had violated Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 by allocating spaces for new shops. 

“When the Corporation conducted a survey in 2017, there were only 1,424 shops. Even though the Street Vendors Act permits allocating space for 1,424 shops, the Corporation violated it by allocating space to 1,900 shops,” said R Kannan, a beachgoer.