Would this time, the authorities — the DSCC authorities to be precise — be successful in clearing the footpaths in Gulistan areas in the capital? In the past, drives to remove hawkers from the capital proved to be always unsuccessful. There are, however, reasons for this failure. These hawkers, poor as they are, do not have alternatives to fall back upon for their livelihood if they are evicted suddenly from the place where they used to earn their livelihood for years. Once evicted, they find darkness before their eyes. True, they do not have any right to sit on footpaths which must be cleared one day for smooth movement of pedestrians, but the authorities must arrange alternatives for their rehabilitation. This time also, the evicted hawkers from Gulistan are holding processions and blocking roads with their demand of not evicting them before rehabilitation.
On Tuesday night, the DSCC magistrate conducted a drive and expelled over a thousand hawkers from the Gulistan area. The evicting authorities are marking roads and footpaths with red, yellow and green and will not allow hawkers on places marked in red. But a leader of the protesting hawkers said they would continue business in the zones marked in red, defying the city corporation order. If the DSCC authorities marked the footpaths in red, we would mark it in green and do our business.
Hawkers sit with their makeshift shops on the footpaths not for free; they give a toll to the area’s ruling partly people and police for occupying the public place. And these people always remain behind the hawkers. In the recent protests, the toll collectors must be behind the hawkers. Therefore, for evicting hawkers from roads and footpaths these invisible hands of toll collectors including police will have to be cut down first. Unless this is done, every effort of removing hawkers will be futile.
Dhaka city does not give a look of a capital city; it looks like a huge bazar, thanks to the footpaths occupied by hawkers in all places around the city. These hawkers make the movement of pedestrians everywhere through the footpaths hard. They are also partly responsible for traffic jams on the roads in many places.
Sooner or later, one day these hawkers from footpaths and roads must be cleared. If alternative bazars are created in strategic places in the capital, and influence and toll collecting by party people and police are stopped, we do not see any reason why the footpaths and roads can’t be made free of hawkers.
