MALAYSIA: Street Vendors Fear City Hall, Await New Policy

By Baradan Kuppusamy Reprint | | Print |

Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, May 9 2006 (IPS) - Rain is what Kadar Sultan, a seller of the native dessert called ‘chendol’ on the streets, fears most. Next comes City Hall.

”When they come they just take away everything – cart, containers, ice cream and even the ice blocks,” Kadar said, explaining his fear of losing his livelihood to the city’s enforcement brigades who are always after mobile street vendors.

‘Chendol’ – a mix of ground ice, cooked black beans, sugar, milk and some condiments – is a favourite on a hot day. But during the rainy season, Kadar’s income drops significantly.

“On a good day, I can earn 30 ringgit (8 US dollars). On a rainy day, it is nothing,” he said. “In fact I lose because I have to throw away all the ingredients.”

Kadar shares a room with four other street vendors – and none of them has a fridge to preserve unsold ingredients. “It is too expensive and besides we cannot afford the electricity bills,” Kadar said in an interview.

Kadar has lost everything to City Hall enforcement brigades at least eight times in 20 years of vending in the streets. “We have to pay a 300 ringgit fine (79 dollars) to get back the cart and utensils and pay daily rent for storage of the cart,” he said. “Sometimes, utensils go missing.”

There are some 60,000 street vendors in the city of two million people and unlike fixed stall owners, vendors pushing carts laden with food and other goods live a precarious life.

Unlike salaried workers, street vendors have no protection against illness orold age. Welfare schemes like compulsory savings for old age, disability benefits and old-age insurance do not apply to them.

Since the 1998 financial crisis and the slowdown in the economy, thousands of low-paid workers lost their jobs and a sizeable percentage of them ended up as street vendors.

Among them is M Parameswary, who sells sliced fruit arrayed on a pushcart. “I lost my job in 1999 and took to vending cut fruits,” she said. “It is a difficult job that demands my full attention,” said the mother of five.”I always worry about the enforcement people coming around to nab me.”

As Malaysia’s urbanisation picks up, more rural people enter the city looking for jobs and many end up as street vendors.

The share of urban population has increased from 51 percent in 1991 to 62 percent in 2005. It is projected that 24 million people or 71.4 percent will live in urban centres by 2020. But the city can only employ between 850,000 to one million people, forcing people to take to hawking and other low-income occupations.

According to the Statistics Department, nearly eight percent of Kuala Lumpur’s population lives below the poverty line income of 510 ringgit (142 dollars) a month – compared to just 0.5 percent in 1995.

Currently, the city supports 48,000 licenced hawkers. They are located mainly in markets, hawker centres, and attachments outside buildings, kiosks and secured stalls. Anecdotal evidence suggests an equal number of hawkers is unlicensed.

After years of neglect and harassment, government policy toward street vendors has changed dramatically.

The government recognises that hawking is micro-enterprise of the poor that provide valuable services to other urban poor and the higher-income population. The annual turnover of this informal sector is estimated to be about two billion ringgit (558 million dollars).

“Successful micro-enterprises not only break the cycle of poverty for their own families but also create employment opportunities within their communities,” said Kuala Lumpur mayor Ruslin Hassan.

“We have helped street-side food vending by allocating space in open-air food courts, but have also regulated it by requiring minimum standards of hygiene and waste disposal,” he said. “We prefer that vending is done in hawker centres that are fully equipped with water, electricity and other facilities. Our policy is to get mobile vendors into food courts…. it is a slow process.”

The government of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has made a call to licence and legalise hawkers, as a way of addressing growing unemployment and income disparity among the urban population.

“Urban poverty could be prevented if the poor were provided with employment opportunities. The poor who sincerely want to make a living in towns must be given the opportunity to become self- employed, including as hawkers and petty traders,” Abdullah said recently.

He wants hawker centres to be “huge, clean and beautiful” with plenty of greenery. “Enabling the poor to earn a decent living would help them break free from the shackles of poverty,” he said, urging local authorities to issue licences.

Helping the poor is a priority in a five-year economic plan that Abdullah launched in April. However, official awareness of the role of hawkers and vendors in the informal economy is not well understood.

“Often, street vendors are seen as pests by the authorities and they are constantly harassed,” said S Arulchelvam, secretary general of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

“Official policy is designed to control, not to help and regularise. Various health, taxation and traffic rules are thrown at the hawkers without a proper study of the impact of these rules on their income and precarious status,” Arulchelvam said. “It is important to formulate policies and measures that respect the humble hawker’s important place in the distribution system and the informal economy.”

Although Malaysian cities accommodate hawkers in food courts and other approved places, they are tough on the unlicenced mobile street vendor, he added. “Mobile food vending is part of Malaysian culture and should be encouraged, regularised and protected.”

A loan programme should be set up to help vendors, he added. “There must be a separate hawkers’ department in every city to look after the welfare of street vendors. Hawkers’ representatives must also sit on the boards of local councils- only then can public policy benefit street vendors,” said Arulchelvam. (* This story was written for Terra Viva, an IPS publication)