Street vendors of Dimapur commemorated Street Vendors Day at Supermarket under the banner of SEWA-Nagaland in collaboration with NEN, Nagaland, on Wednesday, November 14. The vendors called for the Government of Nagaland to provide basic infrastructure to facilitate their trade. (Morung Photo by Soreishim Mahong)
Call for better support from State on Street Vendors Day
Morung Express News
Dimapur | November 14
Amenla Ao, a street vendor in the Supermarket area, has been selling vegetables for 20 years. “Every day we fall sick from breathing dust,” she said today while speaking at the Street Vendors Day organized at Supermarket here by the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)-Nagaland in collaboration with the North East Network, Nagaland.
Worse still, “There are neither toilets nor drinking water sources in the market where we spend all day earning a living,” noted Ao, a representative of SEWA’s Supermarket Unit.
The story is no different in Chumukedima where too much traffic, apart from no toilet or water source, hinders daily vending activities as per Atoli Sema from SEWA’s Chumukedima Unit.
[caption id="attachment_418336" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
Street vendors of Dimapur, seen here, commemorating Street Vendors Day at Supermarket under the banner of SEWA-Nagaland in collaboration with NEN, Nagaland, on Wednesday, November 14. The vendors called for the Government of Nagaland to provide basic infrastructure to facilitate their trade. (Morung Photo by Soreishim Mahong)[/caption]
“We have been vending vegetables for 15 years but all the time we are pushed around from one spot to the other,” said Rosie Rongmei representing SEWA’s Railway Gate Unit. “We pay our taxes diligently yet no one addresses our concerns,” she narrated, calling for a ‘good market’ so that “we can earn and send our children to school.”
Over the past 5 years, the street vendors have been able to articulate these issues under the banner of the SEWA-Nagaland that has 3000 registered members between Dimapur, Phek and Kohima. SEWA is a trade association as well as a movement that works with women engaged in the informal economy/unorganized trade including home based workers, vendors, small business women, producers, women farmers etc.
Majority of street vendors in Nagaland are women. With no representation in any political institution across Nagaland State, the women have little to no infrastructure to appropriately profit from their trade even as their contribution to the economy is significant.
“Street vendors are routinely harassed and not a single Naga bazaar has been set up in Dimapur to help sell the product of Naga women’s labour on our fields,” lamented Alila Pongen, President of SEWA-Dimapur who chaired today’s program.
But not all hope is lost.
The Naga Women’s Hoho, Dimapur (NWHD) has assured to lend weight to issues raised by street vendors. “You are sending our children to schooling and feeding our men through your work,” acknowledged Sungsabeni Jamio, President of NWHD, while speaking today. “For all the women, mothers and their children who sit on the streets through rain and sunshine, we appeal to the Dimapur Municipal Council to immediately set up toilets, drinking water sources, proper sheds for marketing their produce, protection from harassment and relief from multiple taxes,” she stressed.
Her appeal was backed by T Onen Jamir, General Secretary of the Gaon Bura Union, Dimapur, who highlighted the work of the Gaon Buras in Supermarket to facilitate the smooth functioning of the Wednesday market. He assured all women street vendors of a place at the market if they needed it.
Ganesh Sharma, Liaison Officer of the DMC, while recognizing all the issues faced by the vendors recalled the efforts of the municipal authorities in setting up the existing market infrastructure at Supermarket. The SEWA-Nagaland presented a memorandum to the DMC charting out their demands (see below). An invocation prayer was offered for the program by Rev. M Tonlong Konyak, Pastor of the Dimapur Konyak Church.
SEWA Nagaland’s Memorandum to Dimapur Municipal Council on Street Vendors Day 2018 demanded immediate action on the following:
1. Recognize vending as a major livelihood initiative in urban poverty alleviation; make street vendors an important component in the urban plan as they are an integral part of the food distribution system.
2. Put in place a state policy for street vendors and implement the National Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014 and see that women are well represented in the town vending committees.
3. Take proactive role in allocating space to local women vendors in the market at nominal rent even for the built up space.
4. Strict monitoring of wholesalers through regulated timings.
