Chennai Corporation to use GIS mapping for infrastructure boost in vending zones

The Greater Chennai Corporation has embarked on a project to map street vendors to improve the delivery of welfare assistance for them and regulate their business

The Greater Chennai Corporation has started enumeration of street vendors. | Photo Credit: K. PICHUMANI

The Greater Chennai Corporation has started GIS mapping of all vendors and identification of 15 major areas to develop infrastructure for street vending.

Workers from a private agency hired by the Corporation have started enumeration of street vendors in zones such as Kodambakkam, Adyar, Perungudi and Sholinganallur. Work on all the remaining 11 zones of the city will begin shortly. 

They will map the street vendors using ‘mobile app linked with internet’, collecting the photographs of vendors, information about business, their family members, Aadhaar, bank account and other details about their livelihood. This information is expected to improve welfare assistance for street vendors and regulate vending.

At present, the city vending committees have identified around 1,000 vending zones. “Once the enumeration is completed, the city is expected to get more vending zones,” an official said.  

Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi has directed the officers to improve welfare assistance for street vendors and prepare a detailed project report to develop infrastructure in vending zones for all the 15 zones.

Deputy Commissioner (Revenue and Finance) Vishu Mahajan said enumeration had to be done every five years as per The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.

“The previous enumeration was done in 2017. Last time, it was only around 23,000 vendors. The disbursement of PM SWANidhi loan is around 55,000 in Chennai. The rough average for any major city is about 2% of the population. In Chennai, there were over one lakh vendors,” he said.

“This exercise will be comprehensive and the output will be an integrated database of street vendors, along with their GIS locations, their distribution in different areas, vending zones and non-vending zones as per the Act and Rules,” said Mr. Mahajan. 

The Corporation will formulate development plans for one major vending zone for each of the 15 zones. For example, the GCC will identify areas such as Besant Nagar beach and prepare infrastructure development plans for street vending. “We will submit the proposals based on the detailed project report for the Government of India scheme under NULM for support for urban street vendors,” said Mr. Mahajan. 

In 2017, only enumeration was done and identity cards were given for street vendors. This time, the proposals for infrastructure development are expected to be submitted for street vending zones with GIS mapping of the distribution of street vending.