Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday presented e-cart licences to 21 street food vendors based in areas under the jurisdiction of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).
The certificates were distributed as part of a 32-hour upskilling programme, launched by the EDMC, for street food vendors which also recognises their prior learnings.
The pilot phase of the project aims to upskill 2,500 street food vendors with respect to food hygiene, entrepreneurial skills and to make them eligible to obtain e-cart licences.
“By upskilling the vendors and providing them loans for accessing e-cart licences, we will ensure that no vendor is left jobless. Further, this initiative will also provide social security and safety to 2,500 vendors, including e-carts in east Delhi,” EDMC Mayor Shyam Sunder Aggarwal said.
The project will be implemented under the ‘Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)’ component of the Central Government’s skill development initiative — the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 3.0.
“The objective of this project is to provide relevant skills to the street food vendors, leading towards better services to consumers. This will also provide more opportunities to vendors for revenue generation, awareness on regulations and stipulated rules,” an EDMC official said.
Mr. Chandrasekhar said that Delhi has “an estimated 80,000 to 1,00,000 vendors” who were a “substantial part of our economy”.
He added, “There was no support for the vendors till Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government did a nation-wide survey and designed the PM SVANidhi scheme. Empowering street vendors will help empower municipal corporations as well.”
The PM SVANidhi scheme was launched by the Central Government to help street vendors access affordable working capital loans for resuming livelihood activities post COVID-19 lockdown.
Responding to the notion of only a few vendors having availed benefits under the scheme, Mr. Chandrasekhar said, “The informal sector in India is not very well documented across the board, therefore, discrepancies are bound to be there. But that does not dilute the government’s effort in doing what has not been done in the last 75 years, which is to identify street vendors and to upskill them along with financial assistance. Apart from PM SVANidhi, we are even looking at directing the Mudra loans to a category of informal workers such as the e-cart vendors.”
