Politically blessed grabbed legal hawkers' markets

The government must free of illegal occupation pedestrian passages, particularly those in the capital, to help public mobility, said Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain yesterday.

"I will still demand this even if the prime minister is offended," he told the closing of a three-day dialogue on formulating an urbanisation agenda, "Megacities: Bridging Reality and Aspiration", in the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).

Many hawkers' markets have been built to rehabilitate street vendors and free roads and footpaths but politically-backed and powerful people have grabbed the markets' shops, in some cases each occupying a dozen, he said.

As per Dhaka's city corporations, there are nearly 400 kilometres of footpaths and sidewalks meant for pedestrian movement but most have been occupied for decades with shops, hawkers, illegal car parking, construction materials and garbage piles.

City corporation authorities and police are responsible for freeing footpaths. 

One of the foremost reasons for Dhaka's distressing traffic congestion is an unrestricted number of vehicles and wealthy powerful people's defiance to traffic law, said Mosharraf.

"We hardly can remove illegally-built structures because of courts' stay orders," he said, adding that the Buriganga, Balu, Shitalakhya and Turag rivers around the capital have been turned into mindless dumping grounds for sewage and effluent.

Buet's architecture and urban and regional planning departments organised the discussion on the campus in the capital on urbanisation, drawing in 134 relevant practitioners and professionals under a UN-Habitat initiative, Urban Thinkers Campus, themed "The City We Need". The extensive dialogue on issues of housing, mobility, resilience and identity, which together provide grounds for a mega city, made a Dhaka declaration for conserving rivers, wetlands and canals against grabbing and containing air, water and soil pollution marking World Urbanism Day, observed yesterday.    

Other recommendations included making sure access of low income people to affordable housing and water, good public transport, healthcare, safe food, education, electricity, gas supply, ensuring involvement of relevant professionals in planned urbanisation and governance.  

The discussion's outcome will be presented to the general assembly of parties of the third UN-Habitat conference (housing and sustainable urban development) in Kyoto next year.

The first conference, a 20-year event, was held in Vancouver in 1976 and the second in Istanbul in 1996.       

Prof Nazrul Islam, honorary chairman of the Centre for Urban Studies, and Buet Vice-Chancellor Prof Khaleda Ekram also spoke.