No footpaths for pedestrians

A lot has been written about different problems of our capital city. But unfortunately very little has been done so far to rescue the citizens from the difficulties that they are in now. For example, footpaths have long disappeared leaving the pedestrians with no other choice but to walk along the roads and create impedimentsfor traffic movement. As a matter of fact, most of the footpaths have long been occupied by the street hawkers of all kinds, make shift restaurants and the like. It is very well-known that some dishonest members of law enforcing agencies and political parties extract money from the hawkers or for that matter pavement users and allow them to run their business on the pavements. In addition, most of the footpaths are in dilapidated shapes. On the other hand, due to traffic congestion, lot of working hours are wasted everyday. A 10 kilometre journey takes one and a half to two hours in peak hours or even more at times. I hope, the concerned authorities will look into the matter and take necessary steps to free all the footpaths from illegal occupation in the new year and save people from a perpetual problem.

Nadim Javed

Tejgoan, Dhaka.