Who is to Clean up the Mess of Street Hawkers?
IF you ask 100 people in Yangon about the apparent reason for the lack of cleanliness in the city, I bet 100 per cent of them would say it’s due to a lack of discipline and street vendors. The first part I would say lack of enforcement, rather than the lack to discipline. People need strict enforcement to reinforce discipline in them, instead of the city council putting up signages of what ought to happen, hoping against all odds that capital dwellers would studiously follow. Who possibly is under the impression that people who behave in such a disciplined way in Singapore, could conduct themselves in a similar manner as above, when overseas? The high penalties and Singaporean dallar fines could not conceivably be the reason, could it?
Now we dive straight to the issue of the street vendors. I once sat together at the same table with the previous Mayor of Yangon, HE Hla Myint and posed this question to him: what is the most difficult issue that you have to deal with as a mayor? The answer given to me was ‘the issue of street hawkers’. They are everywhere in every part of Yangon, from little back streets to the main arterial roads. And most of them are selling food. The ugliest thing about food sellers is the food waste and the mess that they leave behind at day’s end.
Go around central Yangon, townships such as Pabedan, Kyauktada, Lanmadaw, Latha, etc., and you cannot help but notice a lack of hygienic practices and the habit of throwing away whatever waste in the nearby area or whatever little drain or hole that the hawkers could find. Most of the streets colonized by these food stalls display unsightly arrays of nasty rubbish, threatening both the health and safety of the whole city population.
This behaviour is both unethical and unjust. How can they earn all the revenue and profits from their trade, while the cost of cleaning up their horrible leftovers is having to be borne by the residents and the local government (YCDC)? Every six months or so, YCDC (Yangon City Development Council) would
ask residents in the respective townships, for their contributions to cleaning up the streets, the back streets, the rats, the cockroaches, etc. But most of the mess that caused the infestation of these lovely creatures is not mainly due to the residents themselves. Indeed, they have to pay for the negative externalities brought about by street hawkers. We have not even started talking about the diseases such as Cholera, Typhoid or Plague yet. As recent as a couple of months ago, street vendors in Thakayta township were told to close their roadside food stalls for at least two months, because the source of the cholera pandemic in the neighbourhood was traced back to them.
Contrast that with our neighbouring Thailand, please. They do have street vendors like us. But the streets remain relatively clean as there is enforcement to ensure that these roadside hawkers clean up their mess at day’s end. Now even Thailand is tightening up its grip on the regulations governing roadside stalls.
Based on new Bangkok city council rules governing street vendors announced in September of this year, only economically deficient Thai nationals would be allowed to ply this trade. Specifically, migrant workers would be prohibited from working on these stalls, implicitly targeting Myanmar migrants, who are at the top of both legal and illegal migration lists in Thailand. These vendors would also be forbidden from venturing out into pedestrian walkways. These Thai citizen vendors would have to apply for permits from public health authorities and they can deploy an additional helper at their store. It was not clear from the announcement if the helper also had to be a Thai citizen. The rules also specified the maximum dimensions that the stalls can have and the areas that they can station relative to the size of the roads and walkways.
It’s high time YCDC updated its rules on roadside food stalls across Yangon and began strict enforcement of these rules, for a cleaner, Strict regulations for roadside food stalls are essential to maintain cleanliness.
By U AC
PHOTO : ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS brighter and safer Yangon.
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