Reza Mahmud :
Many of the city’s footbridges, including Kamalapur, are giving more services to the hawkers than doing for the city residents who want to use it.
Hawkers are selling goods in their temporary shops on the footbridges since early morning to late night.
“We cannot pass the footbridge at ease. It has become a trading centre. From kitchen items and home appliances to toiletries are sold here. Almost everything is available at cheap rate, which draws attention of the customers. The hawkers and their customers have occupied the total footbridge permanently,” said Asif Shaheen, a teacher, while passing the Kamalapur footbridge.
From kitchen items and home appliances to toiletries are sold here. Almost everything is available at cheap rate, which draws attention of the customers. The hawkers and their customers have occupied the total footbridge permanently,” said Asif Shaheen, a teacher of a nearby school.
He said also that the hawkers at the same time misbehave with pedestrians if they protest their illegal trading on the bridge.
A mother of two school kids also said that hawkers’ behaviours are beyond tolerance.
She said, “One day I was crossing the bridge with my children for school. Suddenly dirty water from a fish shop drenched my child’s school dress. I found a fish shop owner on the over bridge throwing the water. The dirty and stink water made the dress unusable instantly.”
She said also, “When I protested, the shop keeper misbehaved with me. My boys could not go to school the day.”
All these persons who use the footbridge everyday have similar complaints.
“We cannot use the bridge as the spaces are shirking day by day,” one pedestrian said.
A nearby shop owner of Kamalapur said that some influential persons are behind the illegal market.
“Some of them are the real owners of those shops. Most of them have employees,” he said.
Some of them collect money form the shop owners regularly, he added.
“That is why the administrations also failed to evict the illegal shops from there,” said a nearby resident preferring anonymity.
When asked, a hawker said preferring anonymity that they pay tolls to influential persons.
“No one can evict us from here. Because, we are paying lots of money to those who are very powerful,” he said.
The other hawkers requested us not to write anything about the illegal market as it is their source of earnings.
He said that it is not his shop, but he sells the items as a day labourer of the real owner of the shop, but refused to name his employer.
When contacted, Khan Mohammad Bilal, the Chief Executive Officer of Dhaka South City Corporation said, “We are trying to evict the hawkers from every place. Our officials frequently evict those, but the hawkers sit whenever they get the officials absent.”
