The government has once again decided to keep city's footpaths free from hawkers. Announcing the government decision, Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader said on December 21 last that a drive to evict hawkers from footpaths will be launched within a month. The decision was taken, as reported in this newspaper, at the 22nd meeting of the National Road Safety Council held at a city hotel. The minister told reporters after the meeting that the two Dhaka City Corporations, North and South, and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) would jointly carry out the eviction drive.
Experience of the city dwellers with such drives to evict hawkers as well as beggars from busy city areas is far from satisfactory. Running open air shops on footpaths by a large number of vendors is now a booming business. In some places the flow of vehicular traffic is also obstructed as the peddlers occupy portions of main thoroughfares.
We know that control over city's footpaths is maintained by politically powerful quarters. The vendors run their trade on payment of tolls to the musclemen and a section of law enforcers. The toll collectors realise millions of Taka from the vendors regularly. The eviction drives, carried out on several occasions in the past by the successive governments, proved futile.
Earlier, in the face of stiff resistance from hundreds of thousands of hawkers, the government postponed the drive saying that the eviction will be carried out later on after the wayside vendors are rehabilitated. But we have not heard anything about hawkers' rehabilitation programme until now. The hawkers continue to dominate city streets as usual in exchange of tolls.
During the rule of former president HM Ershad hawkers were shifted to city's less busy areas. Under the emergency rule of the last caretaker government drastic action was taken against the wayside vendors in cities, towns and even in rural haat bazars. Hundreds of thousands of vendors and petty traders were thrown out of profession as the caretaker government, under emergency rule, carried out eviction drives ruthlessly. Century-old village hats on the banks of rivers also had undergone drastic changes. Many small shop keepers who were found running their trade on government lands were driven out though they did not create any traffic congestion in those far off rural settings. Law was applied to them strictly. The situation returned to 'normal' after the rule of caretaker government ended.
On the other hand, keeping city streets free from beggars has not been successful either, despite efforts taken by the government to this effect. In the recent past, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) rounded up beggars from streets in some posh city areas. The alms-seekers were sent to rehabilitation centres outside the capital.
It is indeed a formidable task to keep the streets free from beggars. Invariably they return to their 'jobs' shortly after the crackdown ends. Such government steps to remove beggars from the city are not new; in the past a large number of those people were even sent to rehabilitation centres at Duttapara in Tongi on the outskirts of Dhaka city. But the centres for beggars at Duttapara could not provide proper rehabilitation of the inmates. At one stage, those were found to be ideal grounds for population boom creating new problems for the authorities concerned. What has ultimately happened to Duttapara camps is a subject of research now.
While a permanent solution to the nagging problem of begging is not easy to find, as we suggested earlier in this column, measures should be taken to keep it under control. The vast rural population often undergoes natural calamities, mainly river erosion which renders millions homeless and without provision for earning livelihood. A sizeable portion of these rootless people finds its way into cities and towns in search of jobs. They work as day labourers, domestic helps, rickshaw-pullers and vendors. Those who are physically disabled and too old find begging as a profession. Their numbers are on the rise.
Therefore, it is all the more difficult to chalk out a comprehensive plan without knowing their exact number. A survey by the government agencies with the help of non-government organisations (NGOs) can be conducted to know details about the number of genuine beggars.
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