Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) has started drives to evict the illegal shops and establishments from the city’s footpaths. In the recent past, hawkers would take possessions on all the major sidewalks and roads in the Sylhet city and set up shops and establishments illegally. The footpaths of Bandar bazaar Surma Market point to Chauhatta, Shubhanighat, Amabarkhana Point, Shibganj and Rikabibazaar areas were totally occupied by hawkers as they established shoe, cloths, vegetables and fruit shops on them. Most of the footpaths in Sylhet city were almost unusable to the dwellers of Sylhet until September. It has been a long demand of the dwellers to make the footpaths and roads free of shops and have been notifying this matter to the authority of SSC for many years. Allegedly former mayor of SCC, Bodor Uddin Kamran verbally permitted these hawkers to do business on the streets with a view to win their votes in the election.
After taking charge as the Mayor of SCC in 19 September 2013, Ariful Haque Choudhury has taken steps toevict the hawkers from the footpaths of the city roads and in regards he gave notice to hawkers to withdraw all shops and establishments from the streets. After having served the notice, the eviction drive started and it is still continuing.
Ariful Haque Choudhury said that the eviction of hawkers was a demand of dwellers of Sylhet City since long and considering the dwellers’ suffering, SCC started to evict hawkers from the footpaths and roads. And as Sylhet is a host of the upcoming T20 World Cup 2014, the City authority has started beautification of the city ahead of the event. The eviction drive has coincided with the event.
Courtesy of The Independent
