Efforts to regulate food vendors intensified in city

SHILLONG, Feb 10: The Meghalaya Commissionerate of Food Safety has intensified its efforts to regulate street vendors and ensure food safety compliance in urban areas across Shillong.
Assistant Food Commissioner, BBS Mukhim on Tuesday directed officials to collect the names, business particulars, and other details of the market vendors for further review. “It is important to safeguard public safety while ensuring proper street vendor management. The government aims to protect the livelihood of market vendors while maintaining organised and safe street sales,” she told reporters.
In addition to these inspections, Mukhim outlined several initiatives designed to boost compliance with food safety regulations. “The department is taking up licensing and registration as per the requirement of Sections 31.1 and 31.2 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. Every day the office is open for licensing and registration, and that is part of the work that we are doing,” she said.
As part of the drive, the Food Safety Department has organised a special registration camp.
“You have seen a camp today. We have been holding this camp as one of the FSSAI initiatives for the food safety project. We contacted vendors last week, inviting them to come to the office because we are holding this camp, where we provide them with registration,” Mukhim said.
She acknowledged the challenge of registering every street vendor fast. “We will not be able to register every street food vendor in a day. That’s why we planned carefully and assigned a few officials to help with the registration process, as handling 200 or 300 vendors simultaneously would be impractical and counterproductive,” she added.
Mukhim also addressed concerns regarding mobile or “floating” vendors, stressing that they too must comply with the registration requirement under the Act. “Even those vendors who move from one place to another should be registered as per section 31.1. While we have registered some, there are still many who have not been reached,” she noted.
Citing the example of chanawalas — vendors selling roasted chickpeas — Mukhim remarked on the difficulties involved in gathering and registering these mobile vendors despite repeated outreach efforts.
Beyond registration, the official stressed that ensuring food safety requires continuous monitoring. “You need to conduct regular testing. It is part of our role as food safety officers to collect samples of prepared food sold along the roads and send them to the laboratory for testing and analysis,” she said.
These initiatives form a part of the broader implementation of the Meghalaya Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.