Incessant rain and subsequent water-logging caused slump in sales in the city’s makeshift shops along the footpath on Wednesday-days before the Eid festival. Many areas in the capital went under knee-deep water for non-stop rain on the day and intermittent rainfall in the last seven to eight days, except Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. The heavy rainfall and water-logging forced low- income people to move to the expensive shopping malls, thus making their Eid shopping costlier. In recent years, sale in makeshift shops along footpaths have been getting popularity among lower-income and lower-middle income people due to cheaper prices. However, the shop owners alleged though sales are lower, they would have to make “payment” to the police and political goons. This correspondent found most of the footpath shops between Science Laboratory and Nilkhet crossings shut. In some places, footpaths were totally gone down the water. The apparently frustrated shop-owners there were seen standing beside their shops, thinking if rain goes away they would re-open shops. “As there were heavy rainfalls during the past eight to ten days ahead of Eid, the sale was very poor this year,” said Didar, who set up his shop opposite to Dhaka College. “Despite almost no sale on Wednesday, I would have to pay Tk 400 at night to linesman,” he said, referring to illegal to collector. The biggest ‘unofficial’ trade on the footpaths in the crowded city is extortion of money, estimated at Tk 1.0 billion a month. According to the city corporation, the road network in the capital covers 2289.69km, with 388km being footpath alone. In an earlier investigation, this correspondent found that hawkers occupied about 60 per cent of footpath in the capital, with 250,000 hawkers operating their business. During any religious festival, at least 50,000 seasonal hawkers join the existing squad. Officials said around 15 to 20 linesmen work as extortionist in the 120 popular footpaths, where hawkers operate. These linesmen mainly collect money from the vendors and give a part of it to local leaders and police officers. They collect the cash that varies from Tk 30 to Tk 500, depending on areas. Abul Kashem, a vendor at Farmgate, said he usually sells Tk 20,000 to 30,000 a day during Eid while he sold only Tk 5,000 until 3pm on Wednesday. “I expected a large number of customers as Eid is just two days away, but I did not get the same as the customers could not come for shopping due to periodic rain,” he said. Meanwhile, the Met Office has no good news for footpath shop-owners as well. The Office predicts heavy to very heavy rainfall to occur in places over Rangpur, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions in the next 24 hours beginning from 4.0pm Wednesday.
