Centre to formulate Act to protect street vendors: Minister

Coimbatore, Aug 6 (UNI) The Centre will come out with a model Act for the benefit of street vendors, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja said today.

Talking to newspersons here, the Minister said the proposed Act would help the street vendors to get their right for space to conduct business.

At present they were facing many difficulties from the municipality officials, police and mafia, who exort money from them frequently.

Once the Act was ready, it would be sent to all state governments to frame their own Law depending upon the condition of local areas.

The local municipalities would implement this law, providing space and issuing identity cards to them.

Kumari Selja said the Centre, through revised integrated low cost sanitation programme would procure machines to stop manual scavenging, which was still prevalent in many parts of the country.

The Centre had allocated over Rs 1,000 crore to Tamil Nadu government to construct 50,000 houses for the poor, she added.

UNI