The newly elected Sylhet city mayor, Ariful Haque Chowdhury, has launched a move to make the city clean and traffic congestion-free immediately after he took the office.
Arif formally began his office at Nagar Bhaban on September 18 and on that day he issued a press release asking the street vendors to remove their makeshift shops from the city footpaths and roads.
‘Otherwise, the city corporation authorities would take initiative soon to evict the vendors from the streets,’ the release said.
The mayor in the press release also requested the city dwellers for keeping wastes in the designated spots or in the nearby dustbins between 8:00pm and 11:00pm every day, so that the garbage could be removed timely by the city corporation employees.
The corporation authorities, in association with the Sylhet Metropolitan Police, have already removed some makeshift shops from the main roads including Bandarbazar, Zindabazar, Chowhatta, Laldighirpar and Surma Point in the city, sources in the Nagar Bhaban said.
The SCC sources said a committee has also been constituted in order to keep the city footpaths free from hawkers and resist the city dwellers from dumping garbage hear and there.
Not only that, the SCC mayor is regularly visiting the city centre at 7:00am and 12:00am every day after publishing the press release in the local newspapers, the sources added.
A city corporation official said the mayor during his morning visit asked the vendors not to display their shops on the footpaths.
‘The mayor rebukes if he sees anybody, especially the restaurant owners, dumping wastes on the city road during his midnight visit and cautioned that anybody found responsible would be fined,’ the SCC official said.
Being contacted, Arif told New Age that keeping the city streets congestion-free and reclaiming its footpaths from illegal occupation of street vendors was one of his main election pledges to the citizens for what they elected him the mayor.
‘I’ll try my best to ease the citizens’ suffering till the last day of my five year-tenure,’ Arif said, adding that step to rehabilitate the street vendors in the city would also be taken gradually.
-With New Age input
