Mirpur-1: stalls back on footpaths an hour after eviction, DNCC returns for a second drive at 2:45pm

In Dhaka's Mirpur-1 area, hawkers began preparing to set up stalls on the footpaths again within an hour of an eviction drive ending. The Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) drive ran from 11am to 1pm on Wednesday, October 28, led by DNCC administrator Md Shafikul Islam Khan Milton. The DNCC returned for another drive at about 2:45pm.

The scene was witnessed on the ground in Mirpur-1 on Wednesday. Several hundred stalls were removed during the 11am to 1pm drive.

Yet within an hour of the drive ending, hawkers were seen setting up again on the footpaths in front of Muktijoddha Super Market and Hazrat Shah Ali Shopping Complex.

The Muktijoddha Super Market authorities announced by microphone that stalls were prohibited in front of the market and that anyone with a stall should remove it.

A trader who had a cosmetics stall on the footpath in front of Muktijoddha Super Market, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his stall had been removed. He said he was worried about how he would run his household if he was not allowed to sit there for a month or two.

Asked whether he would go if rehabilitated in a separate place, he said they are usually sent to places where customers do not go. Here, people who come to the market to shop buy from them when they see them; that would not happen elsewhere.

Ripon Khan, a trader at Hazrat Shah Ali Shopping Complex, said that if hawkers are removed from one side they sit down again on another. As soon as the administration leaves, they sit again. He said the government could designate a place behind the shrine, but in his view the hawkers would still sit on the road.

At about 2:45pm, a DNCC Zone-2 vehicle arrived and took away by truck wood, bamboo, bricks and other materials for setting up stalls that were lying by the road. Several stalls of those who had set up again were removed. When others were told to remove theirs, the hawkers removed them themselves. Cleaning workers then swept the road.

DNCC Zone-2 inspector Johurul Alam Sujon said at the time that their drive would now continue, with no fixed time, and they could come at any moment. They have two more teams, he said, which could come and check at any time even after they leave.

Earlier, at about 1pm after the drive, DNCC administrator Md Shafikul Islam Khan Milton told reporters this was not only a footpath eviction drive. He said eviction drives would be carried out at every place in Dhaka city where such clutter exists and obstructs residents' walking, and every footpath would be freed of occupation.

The administrator said he considers it his moral duty to hand people's walking roads back to them. He said there are many markets around where he was standing, and many committee leaders of those markets and ordinary people had personally complained to him many times about this issue.

The DNCC administrator also said that as long as he is in office he will work with a commitment to build a 'Clean Dhaka, Green Dhaka' in line with the prime minister's direction, and that he wants to make Dhaka clean and green.