The city’s food hawkers are entering a new and colourful era. More than 250 of them in the Camac Street, Russel Street, Chowringhee and Elgin Road belt are set to don sky-blue aprons and chef’s caps.

The food will be sold under colourful garden umbrellas. The hawkers will not take up more than one-third of the pavement. And, there will be provision for a tap for every four food vendors.

Institute of Hygiene and Public Health director Indira Chakravorty and mayoral council member (roads) Anup Chatterjee are to flag off the “new era” scheme soon. Former commissioner of Calcutta Police Tushar Talukdar will also be present.

The scheme has been drawn up by the Hawkers’ Sangram Committee, with the help of the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health and the civic body’s roads department.

According to Sangram Committee general secretary Shaktiman Ghosh, all food hawkers in the central business district and on the pavements of 21 main thoroughfares will be brought under the scheme gradually.

The new-look hawking begins this month-end, said Ghosh. The batch of 250 who will flag-off the scheme have had training at the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in cleanliness, hygienic handling of food and its preservation, and allied areas.

The training programme was funded by the Institute and the Sangram Committee. The bill came to Rs 3,000 for a batch of 25 hawkers and the Sangram Committee contributed Rs 300.

These hawkers can display their certificates of training in their makeshift shops.

“Hawkers are now a reality. As it is impossible to raze over 250,000 illegal structures in the city, it is similarly impossible to evict over a lakh hawkers from the pavements,” pointed out mayoral committee member Chatterjee. “So, instead of evicting them, we found it more essential to modernise and streamline them,” he added.

There are 140,000 food hawkers in the city, concentrated mainly on the eastern and northern pavements of Writers’ Buildings, on the pavements in front of the New Secretariat, high court, opposite Lalbazar, in the Poddar Court area, RN Mukherjee Road, Bentinck Street, AJC Bose Road (in front of the Nizam’s Palace) and Camac Street.

According to civic estimates, 300 items are sold by the streetside food vendors in Calcutta, ranging from mutton biryani to doi-chira, aloo parathas to bhaat-machh, chicken tandoori to stew. There are also vendors of cut fruits, sweets and lassi.

“Only on the pavements of Calcutta can anyone find such an array of food for only Rs 5,” said former mayor, now parliamentarian, Prasanta Chatterjee.