An increasing number of winter cloth vendors are mushrooming on the city streets and hindering movement of vehicles while compelling the pedestrians to walk through the main roads. Though earlier this year, both the city corporations conducted drives and claimed they had freed the footpath from hawkers, the ground reality, however, is different. The eviction drives are poorly planned as hawkers return, usually, hours after being removed.
Thousands of makeshift shops have reportedly sprung up on city roads and footpaths, particularly in capital’s Gulistan, Mouchak, New Market, Nilkhet, Farmgate, Rampura, Badda, Mirpur, Mohakhali, Shyamoli, Kallyanpur and Kakrail.
The two city corporations should provide
directives so that registered hawkers
deploy shops at the selected corridors
The two city corporations conduct eviction drive routinely but after the drive hawkers again return to the footpaths for doing business. It is said that law enforcers and a section of unscrupulous local groups take bribes from the hawkers and help them reappear on the roads. It is needles to say that such a situation is jeopardizing the capital’s urban health. Regularly, hundreds of thousands of commuters have to face gridlock on roads due to illegal occupation of footpaths. Road users cannot reach their destinations on time due to forced occupation of footpaths and pedestrians are forced to walk through roads, causing accidents.
It needs no emphasizing that mitigating the hawkers’ menace on the roads and footpaths would not be easy without proper planning and concrete actions. Reports tell us that some 2.5 lakh hawkers in the capital pay tolls to extortionists every day to run their business. Hence, to remove such a huge number of illegal hawkers from the roads and footpaths, hawkers’ registration is a must. It is time to build designated hawker’s corridors adjacent to footpaths so that they do not occupy the streets. Also the two city corporations should provide directives so that registered hawkers deploy shops at the selected corridors.
