Street Vendors represent a very important constituent of the Urban Informal Economy and play a significant role in ensuring availability of goods and services at affordable rates at a doorstep of city dwellers.
Department of Local Government to Government of Punjab has facilitated more than 1 Lac Street vendors for providing affordable loans to Street Vendors to resume their livelihoods that have adversely affected due to Covid-19 Lockdown under PM SVANidhi scheme.
For improving street vendors skills and to provide safe street food to General public, Department of Local Government has signed MoU with Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh with a aim to orient the street vendors on aspects such as their rights and responsibilities, specific policy or laws related to street vendors, food safety, maintenance of hygiene, waste disposal etc. More than 1 Lac street vendors will be trained by the PGIMER, Chandigarh teams.
Under this chain, the Department of Local Government, Punjab Community Medicine & School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh and Department of Local Government, Chandigarh in collaboration with Municipal Council Nangal jointly organized capacity building and training workshops which were inaugurated by Sh. Sanjay Sahni, President Municipal Council, Nangal. Mr. Radesh Kalra, Joint Deputy Director, Local Government, Sh. Manjinder Singh, EO MC Nangal, Sh. Khushbir Singh, Superintendent Sanitation, Smt. Anita Sharma Vice President, Ms Pooja and Deepak Nanda Municipal Councillor MC Nangal and Dr. D.N Prasad, Principal Shivalik College of Pharmacy Nangal were also present. Assistant Commissioner of food, Ms Harpreet Kaur from Department of food safety, Roopnagar along with food safety officer Mr Vivek was also present to encourage the vendors for taking forward training which is mandatory for every food vendor and getting their respective food license within time .
During the season of Covid pandemic, 20 street vendors (As per SOP Guidelines) were registered and attended the training session following strict social distancing norms. The vendors were given free ‘Street Food Vendor’s Hygiene Kit’ which include apron, gloves, head covers and easy to understand IEC material and certificates from PGIMER, Chandigarh.
The training sessions were delivered by eminent experts from various fields, to encourage and ensure the operation of Punjab Street vendors to work more efficiently by following strict quality norms during this Covid pandemic.
Dr Poonam, Associate Professor from PGIMER Chandigarh highlighted the importance of precautions to be taken while purchasing and ordering food, preparing and handling food during Corona Pandemic. She aimed at other aspects as well such as precautions to be taken while disposing of leftover food, personal hygiene practices and practice for keeping street food vendor carts disinfected.
Several aspects of grooming & personal hygiene were covered by Dr. Alpna Rana and Dr. Abhinav Kalra who explained about health benefits of maintaining proper hygiene and awareness about tobacco.
Focusing on the importance of hygienic surroundings and solid waste management, Smt. Jaswinder Kaur and Poonam from Swatch Bharat Mission, gave her views on environmental impacts on health and food vending.
Mr Vivek from PGI gave an interactive session on various aspects of detecting adulterants in different types of food products in their day-to-day life.Sh. Parveen Dogra from DAY- NULM Punjab explained about the various laws/regulations & loans available for street vendors.
During the training a skit was presented by Rudra Theatre Company for educating the street vendors. The skit focused on the need for such training workshops for street vendors and the benefits that will be reaped from it. Concluding the session, street vendors took pledge to follow guidelines and norms of avoiding trans-fat in food and maintaining food hygiene.
Coordination of the workshop activities was done by Dr. Abhinav Kalra and Ketan Sharma from PGIMER, Chandigarh
