Ensure walkable footpaths before clamping on jaywalkers: Experts

The authorities' steps to make the city dwellers used to walk on footpaths by deploying mobile courts in some Dhaka streets has apparently failed. Experts have said that the steps would have worked had the authorities of the mega city cleared its sidewalks before being tough against the jaywalkers. ‘Walkable footpaths are needed for accessibility to opportunities, mobility, public health and environment,' experts said. 'First the authorities have to take proper and sincere steps to free footpaths of illegal occupants alongside ensuring safe zebra crossings and footbridges and underpasses so that the pedestrians can move safely,' they opined. It’s the duty of the 2 Dhaka city corporations and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to clear footpaths, set the priority areas for passersby/pedestrians and traffic control on major roads and residential areas for creating the ground for action against jaywalkers, they viewed. ‘The first job is to make the footpaths clear,’ they emphatically said. ‘It’s the duty of traffic police to help people cross streets. If they make all the sidewalks, road dividers and zebra crossings clear and help pedestrians cross roads, then there’ll be no need to deploy mobile courts to punish them,’ eminent urban planner Prof Nazrul Islam said while speaking about the issue. Prof Jamilur Reza Chowdhury, another prominent urban planner and vice chancellor of the University of Asia Pacific, said the hawkers and small traders who grab the city walkways to do business must be brought to justice aiming to make footpaths clear for walking. ‘All footpaths are illegally occupied as vendors are doing business by bribing the police,’ he added, according to a news agency.