A HOME ministry affidavit, submitted to the High Court on April 29, says that local political leaders and ward councillors are involved in running business by grabbing footpaths in Dhaka. A five-member committee, formed in May 2023 to investigate illegal businesses on Dhaka footpaths as per the court鈥檚 previous directive, made the disclosure. The court, upon receiving the affidavit, has asked the home secretary and the local government division secretary to submit a list of the political leaders and the councillors who occupied footpaths in the capital for making money illegally by May 13. The affidavit reveals nothing new. Many reports have earlier pointed to the presence of a nexus comprising local political leaders, ward councillors, law enforcers and city corporation officials behind the illegal allotment of spaces on roads and footpaths in Dhaka to hawkers, making the roads and footpaths off-limits to pedestrians. All this is continuing in plain sight, as the authorities appear reluctant to take effective steps to stop extortion and reclaim and preserve the roads and footpaths.
Almost all busy footpaths, footbridges and intersections in Dhaka are crowded with illegal makeshift shops for which the vendors need to pay daily, and the money goes, as the Bangladesh Hawkers League president says, to the police station officer-in-charge of the respective areas, ward councillors, leaders and activists of the Awami League and its various associated bodies. Hawkers are required to pay between Tk 20,000 and Tk 500,000 for a space on roads or footpaths, depending on the locations, to get allotment from a lineman, the liaison man between the hawkers and those who ultimately receive the money. Besides, the hawkers need to pay Tk 300鈥�1,000 daily to the linemen to operate their businesses. With about 300,000 hawkers occupying the roads and footpaths, the nexus extorts about Tk 9 crore daily. City planners and pedestrians, meanwhile, continue to urge the authorities to free the roads and footpaths, and the mayors of Dhaka North and South City Corporations have, on various occasions, pledged to break the extortion syndicate, evict the hawkers and free the roads and footpaths for pedestrians. The city authorities conducted eviction drives, penalised the hawkers and linemen and reclaimed some occupied spaces in the past, but the situation went back to square one within days. 聽Without the rehabilitation of the thousands of hawkers and without breaking the nexus, eviction drives are unlikely to make any difference.
The authorities must, therefore, prepare and submit a list of the political leaders and the councillors who occupied footpaths or walkways and must take action against them. The authorities must free the roads and footpaths. In so doing, the government should adopt a hawkers鈥� management policy, a policy that will regulate hawkers operations, eliminating the extortion syndicate.