Livelihood worries haunt 7K Karnal street food vendors

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, May 19

The ongoing lockdown has thrown as many as 7,000 street food vendors out of work in the district in the last two months.

They are worried about their livelihood as well as payment of rented accommodation and purchasing books for their wards. Keeping in view the current scenario, they are fearing a grim situation in coming days as well and feel that if they were allowed to operate, people would not come out to have street food from their rehris, which used to be crowded in urban and rural areas prior to the lockdown.

Uday Sharma, a street food vendor aged 35, has been working in Nehru Palace market for the last nine years after coming to Karnal from Etawah in UP as he had no means to earn there. His younger brother, two children and wife are entirely dependent on him and they live in a rented accommodation in Sadar Bazar. “I have no work to sustain my livelihood. The government should think about us also as it is painful to borrow money from others regularly,” he added.

Like Uday, there is Dheeraj Singh, a fast food vendor in the same market, who has no fallback option. He said the Covid lockdown had spoiled their meagre resources to sustain their livelihood. “I have a wife and two children to feed and no other option to run my livelihood. Ever since the lockdown has been enforced, I am sitting idle in the house,” he added.

Most of them are looking for other business options to feed their families, but they have no financial support.

Naveen Kumar of Hanuman Gali is also dependent on daily earnings to feed his family of seven members, but the lockdown has had an adverse impact on their life. “I have borrowed money from my friends to run my livelihood, but now I have no courage to ask for more from anyone. My mother is a heart patient and due to the lack of money, I could not go to Chandigarh to get her check up done. I request the government to allow us to start our business again so that we can earn for our family. I even have no money to purchase books for my children,” he added.