Hawkers in the capital on Saturday alleged that they needed to pay the police and local leaders of the ruling Awami League through linesmen between Tk 30 and Tk 300 in extortion money every day.
They, however, said that the amount varied depending on the places they were doing business and the products they traded in.
‘No hawker in the capital can do business without paying money to the lawmen and the leaders,’ the Bangladesh Chhinnamul Hawkers’ Samiti convener, Kamal Siddiqui, said at press conference at the Dhaka Reporter’s Unity.
He also placed 11-point demands that include end to extortion of money from hawkers, punishment of toll collections, no eviction of hawkers without their rehabilitation, official recognition of their profession, formulation of a policy for hawkers, an end to their harassment by mobile courts and licences for hawkers.
The demands also include arrangement for holiday markets in front of different markets on weekly holidays, allocation of shops of hawkers’ markets to real hawkers, strict implementation of premises rent control law and rehabilitation of hawkers who are victims of climate change with climate change funds.
The hawkers’ association convener said that they would take up their demands with the government on November 1 and threatened a greater movement if the government failed to meet their demands in a month.
The association’s member secretary Sheikh Imran, convening committee member Harunur Rashid and former vice-president Abdul Kader attended the press conference.
People known as linesmen collect toll in the name of the police and local political leaders, the association’s convener said.
‘If anyone refuses to pay the toll, he is forced to keep a local leader as a partner of his business,’ said Kamal Siddiqui.
The Dhaka city unit Awami League’s general secretary Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya brushed aside outright the allegations of ruling party men
being involved in extortion. He said that none of the city unit leaders were involved in such a heinous act.
Krishna Pada Roy, the Ramna zone deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told New Age that they would take legal steps against extortionists, whoever may be, if they received any complaints from hawkers.
‘But hawkers should not do business occupying footpaths. This is illegal,’ he added.
Anwar Hossain, the Motijheel zone deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said that that he himself would file case against the extortionists if anybody could give him names of the police personnel collecting tolls from hawkers.
An unsubstantiated allegation would not be proper in this regard, he added.
The hawkers’ association convener, Kamal, referring to a study carried out by the organisation in 2010, said that 52 per cent of the toll collected this way goes to policemen and 5 per cent to political parties and local clubs, 7 per cent to local goons and 5 per cent to leaders of hawkers’ organisations.
Although hawkers pay toll, they are always used by the ruling party men, Kamal said, adding that his organisation was non-partisan but has supporters from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
The hawkers are asked to join rallies and processions of the ruling Awami League closing their trade and they often face the threat of being evicted by the administration, he said at the press conference.
He also said that the country has about 23.97 lakh hawkers, with about 2.35 lakh being in the capital.
The association’s convener said that hawkers occupied footpaths to sell their goods as most of them were not in a position to buy shops at the hawkers’ markets run by the Dhaka City Corporation. Shop prices range between Tk 2 lakh and Tk 2.5 lakh, he added.
The number of hawkers is also increasing as more people are coming to the city because of joblessness in villages and many of them come to the after losing their property to natural disasters, Kamal said.
An allegation was made at a meeting of a subcommittee, set up by the parliamentary standing committee on the labour and manpower ministry to curb extortion on highways, with transport worker leaders on October 13 that a nexus of the police, politicians, administration and trade unions was involved in transport section extortion which was pushing up commodity prices by 200 per cent.
‘We have preliminarily found that people of various quarters such as the police and politicians of both the ruling and opposition parties are involved in transport sector extortion. Final recommendations will be made after talks with the police, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority and other stakeholders,’ the subcommittee head, Israfil Alam, said after the meeting on the day.
‘Extortion is patronised by the police, politicians and the administration,’ the president of the Bangladesh Road Transport Workers’ Union, Ali Reza, told New Age after the meeting on the day.
‘Associations of owners and workers have no way but to collect toll as they need to pay a portion of the money to the police and political leaders,’ the president of the Bangladesh Tank Lorry Workers’ Federation, Mohammad Shahjahan, told New Age.
Source: newagebd.com/newspaper1
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