Street vendor festival to be held in Anna Nagar on Saturday

CHENNAI: As a part of the SVANidhi Mahotsav, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) will be hosting a Street Vendor Festival on July 30 in Anna Nagar.

Union Minister of State L Murugan and State Local Administration Minister KN Nehru will inaugurate the street vendors exhibition and distribute loan assistance, a Corporation release said. The event will be held near Bougainvillea Park at Anna Nagar between 4 pm to 8 pm on Saturday evening.

The PM Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi (SVANidhi) is a central government scheme designed for the street vendors to access working capital loans in order to revive their livelihoods post the Covid-19 lockdown.

The festival SVANidhi Mahotsav is a part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav and is a cultural event taking place from July 9 to July 31. It is being organised in 75 cities across the country for the PM SVANidhi beneficiaries. In the city, as many as 1.12 lakh vendors have applied for the loan under the scheme and 58,093 persons were already got the loan sanction. About 45,834 persons have received the load.

The release said that it had begun taking a census of street vendors in the city as mandated by the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. Initially, the census was being conducted in four of the 15 zones – Kodambakkam, Adyar, Perungudi and Sholinganallur.