The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE government has selected twenty spots in the capital city for the rehabilitation of the hawkers evicted earlier. This decision was taken before the Eid but its implementation was deferred for certain reasons. Hawker markets are essentially temporary and open-air ones. Those represent an important sector of the informal economy that makes up 40 percent of the national economy of Bangladesh. As the overhead cost is less in such markets, goods at cheaper rates are available there. Hawker markets play an important role in the society and economy of the country. In those markets business can be run with comparatively small capital. This advantage creates the scope of self-employment for unemployed people and thus helps reduce poverty and social tension. They also help the accumulation of investible surplus.

When hawkers can accumulate sufficient capital, they enter the formal economy and shift from open-air markets to onganised shopping centres. In the past multi-storied buildings were constructed on valuable plots of land in the city in the name of so-called hawker markets. But they no more remained hawker markets.

It is reported that there are about eight million hawkers in the country. By supplying different essential items at cheap prices they render a useful service to the poor and the people of marginal income groups. The eviction programme made the hawkers jobless and hit hard large numbers of their family members who were dependent on them. The poor and low-income group people also did not have an alternative arrangement to buy goods at cheaper rates. Moreover, it is reported that many small factories utilising the hawkers as outlets of their products faced closure as a result of the eviction. All those developments had aggravated the saturated employment situation in the country.

The government has decided to allocate more spots to facilitate running of their businesses. It is gathered from the media that this decision of the government will help the rehabilitation of some 100,000 hawkers and street vendors of Dhaka City. This is a welcome decision. Hawkers need also to be protected from extortion and different forms of harassment. Rehabilitation of the hawkers of the capital city should be followed by making similar arrangement for hawkers who used to operate in other cities to earn their livelihood. The authorities concerned, however, should not repeat the mistakes of creating multi-storied hawkers' markets which then become shopping arcades of rich shop-keepers. Hawkers' markets should always help poor people to earn a livelihood and those who can accumulate capital would graduate out to organised markets leaving space for others at the hawkers' markets.