Street Vendors in Islamabad – Voice from the Ground (P & R Vol.2 Issue 4)

According to a survey about street vendors conducted by a Senior Research Fellow Zia Banday at PIDE, more than 95% of the street vendors in Islamabad are migrants from poor and under developed areas of the country. The highest percentage of vendors was 43% representing KPK and most of them belonged to the terror affected areas of agencies.it was generally observed during the survey that most of the respondents belonging to the Afghan Nationality and there were around 6% Afghan national Vendors. Education level was observed to be low among street vendors. 29% were completely illiterate and two third of them possessed the education level below matric. Vending starts at the very early age as 8% of the vendors were below 18 years of age and youngest of them was 15 years old. There is a possibility that there exists a large number of young vendors below the age of 18 as these young vendors doesn’t have CNIC. There were 10% vendors whose age range ranged 50 years and above, oldest being 70 years of age. If we link these vending years with age factor in vending then we came to a conclusion that there is a significant number of vendors that started at a very early age. lack of education and skill development are due to poverty and large household size that limits the affordability of education.