Hawkers block roads in Uttara protesting eviction, causing traffic chaos across city

Hawkers blocked the road in Uttara's Azampur on Saturday, to press home their demands including permanent rehabilitation and stopping eviction, halting vehicular movement on airport road until the afternoon. 

They took to the street around 10am in front of the office of the Dhaka-18 lawmaker Habib Hasan at Rajlakhsmi bus stand, causing enormous suffering to city dwellers and officer-goers.

This road blockade brought vehicular movement in Chaurasta of Gazipur, Ashulia and Baipail via Abdullahpur and on Banani and Badda roads to a complete standstill. Traffic congestion in these roads soon created long tailbacks in surrounding areas. 

Hawker leaders said that their businesses were devastated during covid. If they are evicted this time, they would end up on the roads.

Later on, lawmaker Habib assured them of solving their problems within this week. The hawkers left the street after the lawmakers' assurances.  

Earlier on 2 December last year, they started a similar movement for rehabilitation. 

At that time too, Dhaka-18 constituency MP Habib Hasan had assured them of taking necessary steps. 

The agitating hawkers said although the MP assured them of taking action within three days, he did not solve any problem.

"We managed to disperse them from the road around 1pm and the traffic movement was normalised afterwards," Saiful Islam, deputy commissioner of Uttara Traffic Zone, told The Business Standard.

Meanwhile, Mustafizur Rahman, assistant commissioner of Gulshan Traffic Zone told TBS, "Long tailback of vehicles was also seen due to the renovation works of a Tongi road." 

"The traffic jam stretched to 15km even up to Banani," he added.

The hawkers' movement started when they blocked the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway.