How much for street hawking?

Reports published recently in several dailies say that hawkers and small street vendors pay Tk 8.5 billion annually as bribe and illegal toll to various agencies and organised gangs across the country. Not too upsetting a revelation, as it explains why hawkers all over the country are so increasingly invasive on footpaths, even on some of the main city thoroughfares. One should see this as a means to justifying the money they spend to defy what they are strictly forbidden to do. Plunging on the forbidden and the unlawful is a tendency common to most humans; but given a chance for legitimsing the unlawful acts, however serious those may be, the actors are rendered strong defenders of their actions, and perhaps 'rightfully' so. This precisely is the narrative of all the city footpaths, open spaces, road islands.
The information of the amount of money paid annually has not come from any investigative reporting, but curiously from the Jatiya Hawkers' Federation (JHF) at its third national conference in the capital. Addressing the conference, the representatives of the JHF said some 0.5 million hawkers and vendors earn their livelihood through small trading on footpaths in the capital alone and each of them has to pay Tk 50 every day on an average as toll or bribe to run daily business. The issue, however, is not that simplistic. True, the JHF has divulged the information to bring to light the harassment and extortion small street hawkers face from, among others, the law enforcing agencies. But the reality that occupation of city footpaths is an unlawful act did not figure as an issue. This goes to explain that one misdeed provides cover for another. The association of the hawkers, while alleging of illegal tolls has clearly missed out that footpaths are meant for pedestrians and not for the hawkers to sell their wares.
One need not argue that freeing the footpaths and city roads from hawkers would relieve the city dwellers of much of their routine plight due to congestion in roads. But again, the wares traded by the small hawkers benefit a majority of the low and lower-middle income urbanites. No doubt, the income generated from street trading is considerable and must not be ignored, given a host of stark realities. There were moves in the past, especially during the initial periods of military or army-backed regimes to 'clean' the city streets from hawkers, but the drive never lasted beyond months - clearly because of the services that these small traders cater to the needs or demands of millions of people in the cities. So, it is basically the need that prompts wrongdoing from both ends: the hawkers grabbing the footpaths for a livelihood, and the law enforcers and their allies methodically extorting them in return.
The solution lies obviously in finding ways on how small street traders can run their businesses to their own benefit as well as that of the consumers. Rehabilitating them all is, no doubt, a mammoth task, but leaving it at where it is now will not only cause the vicious practice to aggravate further but more than anything encourage defiance of the rule of law to the utter dismay of citizens. Drawing up a planned course of action to address the situation, at least in phases, could be a reasonable proposition for the authorities.