Regularise street hawkers’ business

A NATIONAL English daily report estimates that a nexus of police and criminals, city corporation officials and political party cadres’ are extorting Tk 850 crore from hawkers every year. The report cited a recent press conference by hawker leaders which conjectured that there are over 5 lakh hawkers in the country and each of them on an average pays Tk 50 every day to “linemen” – the private confidants of extortionists. This payment rate even reaches up to Tk 400 in the case of large vendors, the report found. The rates vary depending on the location of stalls. Hawkers trading along busy streets vibrant with commuters have to pay more. There are previous news reports in national dailies which show that if the hawkers are unable to pay the extortion money, they are tortured, and their makeshift stalls and goods are damaged.
This extortion money is eventually borne as extra costs by the customers as they have to bear higher prices for hawkers’ items. Citing first hand references from hawkers in Dhaka streets the report found that to earn the extortion money, one tea vendor had to sell a cup of tea at Tk 6, which he could have sold at Tk 3. He thought that the lesser price of tea would have hiked his sales. So clearly this extortion has become an informal VAT the burden of which is borne by buyer and seller – in cash and in kind. Agreeing to this fact, hawker leaders even argued why this money could not be collected by the government itself? They thought that at least in that case the collection would be legalized and there was always a chance that the money could be used for public projects which include the welfare and essential rehabilitation of floating hawkers.
The extent of robbery and extortion sponsored by factotums of the state. Hawkers are one of the most underprivileged service providers of the supply chain of our society. Even they cannot escape the police-party alliance of extortionists. Hawkers are deemed as the “informal sector” in our fiscal policy and are generally exempted from taxes considering the impoverished condition they are living in. It turns out that this is no more true now, and this sector needs radical redefinition as they are already paying the money, whoever may be at the receiving end.
Tax is also extortion when tax money is not used in public service. But at least to save the hawkers from being harassed by various extortionists their business needs to be regularised.