City authority says it will auction off goods confiscated from street vendors
Kathmandu Metropolitan City has seized goods worth Rs 1.5 million in four months KMC’s city police confiscating items from street vendors. Post File Photo
The Kathmandu Metropolitan City has announced that it will auction off the goods seized from street hawkers and other illegal vendors.
This will be the first-of-its-kind move from the city. The city authority has collected goods worth around Rs 1.5 million in the past four months. “Earlier, we used to return the confiscated goods after charging Rs 1,500 fine to the vendors. But this did not deter the vendors from coming back to sell their wares illegally,” Dhanapati Sapkota, chief of the Implementation Department at the KMC, told the Post. The metropolis has seized several articles from illegal vendors. Footwear, masks, underwear, pants, shorts, belts, caps, bags, vests, wallets, handkerchiefs, to name a few. These seized items have been kept in Teku under the care of City Police. Sapkota said the metropolis deploys 30 city police constables every day in 32 wards to deal with the vendors selling goods by occupying roadsides and overhead bridges. The effort, however, have been largely ineffective as the footpaths at Ratnapark, Koteshwor, New Baneshwor, Chabahil, Kalanki, Sundhara areas are filled with vendors selling their wares in the evening. “We are trying to resolve this issue. The vendors encroach upon the footpath after 7 pm because that’s when we are off duty. We are planning to extend our duty hours, so that illegal vendors don’t get a free run of the city,” said Sapkota. The metropolis has already formed a five member evaluation committee under senior Civil Engineer Bhairav Bogati. “We are in the last phase of announcing the auction,” said Sudarshan Bhattarai, chief at the store section at the metropolis. “We will hold the auction most probably by next week after the committee’s decision,” said Bhattarai, who is also the member secretary of the committee. He said that the KMC is launching the new auction programme under the Nepal government’s Economic Administration Regulation. According to an independent survey, there are over 10,000 street vendors in Kathmandu. Street vendors have long been asking the government to provide them alternative vending zones, and a suitable time for them to operate their business. The government, however, has not been able to solve the problems of street vendors.
Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues, crime, and human interest stories since 2011. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
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