Agra: Under the smart city project, street vendors will be trained professionally in 10 cities of Uttar Pradesh, including Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Allahabad, Aligarh, Bareilly, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Jhansi and Kanpur. Team of experts in each city will give lessons to roadside vendors on the standard way to deal with consumers, importance of maintenance of sanitation and hygiene and business management. The state ministry of urban development has directed smart city project authorities of the ten cities in this regard.One of the basic objectives of the national policy for urban street vendors under the smart city project to give vendors legal status by amending, enacting, repealing and implementing appropriate laws and providing legitimate hawking zones in urban development.According to a senior official in the ministry of urban development, in all the major cities, vendors operating on footpaths and roadsides cause major traffic menace besides adversely affecting maintenance of sanitation and hygiene.“Therefore, the state government has decided to provide special training to street vendors. The work for training of street vendors has been assigned to the central government agency, Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies,” he said.Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been working on a “smart” plan for the vendors for the past three months. Three streets of Tajganj locality, which sees movement of tourists on a daily basis, were selected for development of special vending zones. Currently, ground work on the plan has been stopped following objections of the Archeological Survey of India, forest department and the cantonment board.RK Singh, the nodal officer for the Agra smart city project, said, “Work on development of the street vending zones will be re-started very soon. Under the plan, street vendors will be specified space to operate. The move will provide street vendors with business security and also help decongest roads to a large extent.”Municipal commissioner of Agra Arun Prakash, who is also the CEO of special purpose vehicle (SPV) for Agra smart city private limited, said, “Agra smart city will have smart vendors. They will be issued identity cards and provided professional training by experts. They will be taught importance of cleanliness and hygiene, etiquette to deal with consumers and basic business management. Besides, they will be updated about the Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act, 2014 and government schemes.”The proposed vending zones will have drinking water facilities, proper street lights, concrete pavements, parking space, dustbins and seating arrangements for customers or visitors.

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