Tirupati: Rains make street vendors' lives miserable

Tirupati: The life of street vendors became miserable in the flood-hit Tirupati city almost for the last 5 to 6 days. Facing manifold problems the hawkers were put to severe hardships. Like any other cities or towns, street vendors are aplenty in Tirupati as well and one can always see bustling footpaths in the Smart City.

However, the unexpected heavy rains and the resultant floodwaters in Tirupati and its suburbs have cut the transport channels. Several villages around the city have no connection with the rest of the world and within the city too several streets were submerged in floodwater providing no chance for normal activities even after five days.

Several street vendors come from the neighbouring villages or various small colonies inside the city to the streets daily in search of their livelihood. They sell vegetables, fruits, flowers, fish, meat, run small eateries among other things. Now, they are not in a position to come out of their homes nor are the people ready to buy from them. Moreover, as the vegetables, leafy vegetables and other crops have been damaged, they could not bring anything for sale.

Tirupathi Rythu Bazaar presents a deserted look for the past few days with not only buyers but the number of sellers have reduced by 50 per cent. A vegetable vendor said that he could not find either any vegetables for sale or the buyers. Another flower merchant said, rains damaged flower crops heavily and with the ongoing floods there is a problem of supply shortage and the prices have become high.

A betel leaves seller said that they were not getting the leaves for the last three days and only trying to clear the old stock.

Even the plight of shopkeepers was horrible as people were not willing to go shopping wading through the floodwaters. The AIR Bypass road which has various branded shops along with small eateries was still experiencing huge flow of water on the street. A shopkeeper said that they were not getting even 20-30 per cent business now.

Expressing their pathetic conditions, the vendors were recalling the Covid 1st and 2nd waves which gave them several sleepless nights. "When the situation has been slowly limping back to normalcy, the unusual rains again hit us hard and it will take some more time for us to recover from the losses. Another low pressure warning has been scaring us still and it seems nature was taking revenge on the mankind," they felt. And, of course, the people were of the view that these conditions are leading to huge price rise with which their budgets are adversely affected.