Hanoi sweeps vendors from city streets

By Grant McCool

HANOI (Reuters Life!) - Vietnamese hawkers, the women in conical hats who sell fruit, flowers and vegetables, have added a dash of color to the streets of Hanoi for decades, but from Tuesday, they are about to become a lot less visible.

City authorities have banned the ubiquitous vendors, who roam the streets with two heavy baskets balanced by a bamboo pole on their shoulders, from 62 streets in the capital of about four million people from July 1.

Pavement parking of vehicles, including small motorbikes that are still the most common form of transportation in Vietnam, have also been banned on 52 streets by authorities who say their aim is to create a greener, more orderly city.

The vendors have been part of the capital's scenery for generations and proposals to restrict their trade have stirred debate in the local media for months.

They are mainly poor women who travel daily from the countryside before dawn to earn a few dollars a day selling produce to city residents and in the Old Quarter to tourists, whom they also charge a small fee to pose for photographs.

For years they have played a cat-and-mouse game with police, but the rules have now become tougher with fines of 40,000 to 1 million dong ($2.50 to $60) to be imposed on repeat offenders.

"We are from the countryside and we have to continue coming here to earn a living even if the police chase us away," said one vendor who declined to be named.

There are an estimated 10,000 street vendors in Hanoi, 90 percent of them migrants and most of them women, officials said.