Appreciating the ban on street hawkers and vendors illegally occupying the public footpath and roadside vehicle parking areas in Dimapur city, the Naga Council Dimapur (NCD) has, however, appealed to the responsible authorities to designate suitable place for local vendors.
NCD vice president (Adm) Holuto Aye and general secretary LK Peter Anal maintained that Naga local unemployed youths, women and individual families were the “most affected by financial crunches.” NCD stated that setting up of food courts along the roadside by locals to earn their livelihood was “always hailed as honest, innovative step for anyone trying to live by honest and hardworking means.”
The council also said that those groups mostly Naga populace starting to venture into business activities in Dimapur city to earn their livelihood in recent years was “a result of compulsion by their growing need” to secure necessities of life. “It is also understood that owing to late venturing and financial incapacities, they are unable to find any empty space in the market, so they adopted vendor business on the footpaths or roadsides,” NCD stated.
NCD asserted that almost all the best commercial sites were occupied by non-locals with their “lucrative business establishments” in Dimapur city years back.
NCD appreciated the authorities for banning all footpaths and roadsides vendors to ease traffic movement. The council, however, said that while doing so the earning avenues of vendors especially Naga locals were “being dismembered.”
It stated that source of sustenance of many families and individuals were now put to test.
NCD stated that any act or implementation that threatened the core source of financial income for local vendors would be “touted to be too expensive a cost to whatever be the reason behind any implementation, citing whatever law and order issues attached to it.”
On seeing the plight of the affected vendors, NCD expressed concern by the move of the authority to “dispel and discourage the local business vendors.”
NCD has, therefore, appealed to the responsible authorities to allow the vendors to continue their business or designate suitable place so as “to encourage them to continue their honest way of earning their livelihood.”