Bhayandar: The Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation’s (MBMC) seems to have failed in tackling the illegal hawker menace in the twin-city on the virtue of its own mechanism.
This is evident of the fact that the civic administration has now decided to take private help to tackle the menace which has assumed alarming proportions. In a controversial move, the MBMC has appointed a private manpower agency to get rid of illegal hawkers dotting the roads and pavement in the region.
The contract which will saddle the municipal exchequer with a financial burden of Rs 19 lakh every month envisages deployment of a private workforce of 50 personnel who will be armed with walky-talky’s and move around in vehicles including jeeps and tempos. The personnel will work in two shifts during the morning and evening hours.
“With an aim of rehabilitating hawkers, we have started constructing markets at strategic locations across the twin-city. However the current eviction work is only a 3-month pilot project,” said municipal commissioner Balaji Khatgaokar. MBMC’s anti-encroachment wing has recently included private bouncers into its brigade.
Uniformed bouncers deployed by a private manpower supply agency currently accompany the civic teams in hawker eviction and demolition drives conducted in the region. 13 designated roads which have been tagged as No Hawker Zones by the MBMC have remained only on paper. In the background of this, the glaring links between hawkers, politicians and civic personnel has become apparent.
