Dashain relief for street vendors

Bishnu Prasad Aryal

KATHMANDU: If you are a street vendor, here is a good news: city police, who routinely harassed you, chased you or confiscated your goods from the streets, are giving you a hefty concession this festive season.

To ensure that every ordinary citizen enjoys this Dashain to the fullest, the Metropolitan City police has announced that the vendors could sell their goods anywhere on the streets .

“This decision might come against the traffic rules, but we want these ordinary people doing small businesses to live happily during the greatest festival of the Hindus,” said a government source.

For Leela Shrestha, 44, of Chainpur VDC-8 in Dhading, one of the vendors, the news has brought a big shy of relief. She is delighted to spread her shop in one of the busiest streets and earn money.

“I am confident enough that I can do a good business this Dashain and bring cheers to my family,” said Leela, “On all other occasions, I was terrified selling goods on the streets.”

For a decade, Leela shares a tiny rented room with her two sisters and three daughters. They have been leading

a mediocre life in Kathmandu — one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Worse, the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities have left the family in recent months with a bottom line concern: How do we educate our children by vending goods, which do not fetch enough to pay the rent and eat a full-stomach meal?

Leela’s business is confined to Sundhara on normal days. But she was routinely harassed by police. “We pocket some Rs 300 to 400 each day but in extreme fear of police snatching away our goods,” the family echoed their concern.

Vendors, by profession, sell one of the cheapest goods ever sold by any retailer in the capital. Their customers, many of them low-and-middle-income, bargain to their teeth for prices too little to fetch them a profit margin. “It’s not that easy to be a vendor in streets, you need to be skillful,” Leela said.

Consumer Ramila Devkota, who was shopping from a vendor for her kids, said that the clothes sold in the streets were doubly cheaper than in the commercial houses. “However, we are accustomed to bargain tightly,” she said, crackling a joke.

Another vendor Meghnath Siwakoti from Sunkhani VDC in Dolakha district has been continuing his profession for eight years in the capital. “It is hard to celebrate this festival in ecstasy due to the skyrocketing price in the market,” he said.

“This time, the sale is very low, it could be the impact of economic meltdown,” said Siwakoti.

“Vendors on previous years pocketed Rs 5,000 a day. However, now, we are hardly earning Rs 500,” he grieved.

Siwakoti, who is also the member of the Joint Business Association of National Trade, expressed his sadness over the problems facing hundreds of vendors in the Kathmandu Valley, who he said were marginalised.

This time around, KMC has allowed the vendors, who number in hundreds, to make little money though, by bargaining with the tightfisted consumers.