With day seven of the holy Ramzan fasting underway yesterday, Eid shopping started picking up slowly, leading to traffic snarls. The number of rickshaws hitting the streets also kept increasing day by day. Seasonal migrants who land in the capital during Ramzan for a quick buck from rural areas contribute to the traffic woes, said a traffic sergeant at the Science Laboratory crossing trying to control the traffic towards the city’s shopping streets at Elephant Road in capital. His trouble was compounded by shoppers, particularly women, streaming towards Gawsia and New Market where ladies’ dresses, shoes, sandals, bangles, along with children’s dresses and shoes, are on sale.
Women who prefer to travel by rickshaw, besides those taking a motor transport, add to the problem. The rickshaws, together with hawkers and makeshift iftar sellers occupying pavements and the kerb side, make it difficult for the traffic to move at normal pace.
Buses dropping passengers in the middle of the street compound the situation. Rickshaws occupying the streets forming three to four lines add to the ordeal, said the harried policeman trying to discipline the new rickshaw peddlers, who have arrived in the city to earn a living as harvesting is over in the villages. Apart from the ubiquitous rickshaws, parking in front of the shopping malls and markets and shops further add to the headache for all from road users to traffic managers. Even presence of police wreckers fail to deter them on the no parking zones because police are allegedly kept happy by the market and shop owners.
Besides the legion of rickshaws and unruly bus drivers and human haulers, pedestrians forced to walk on the streets because of crowded pavements also make life difficult for drivers of vehicles to negotiate through the maze of rickshaws, pedestrians and makeshift shops and vendors selling their wares occupying parts of the kerb side.
From Gulistan to Farm Gate, New Market, Elephant Road to Dhanmondi, the picture is the same. People go on a shopping spree this time when most Muslims buy new dresses or shoes or gifts for their near and dear ones and this makes traffic management really tough.
However, there is no guarantee that the shoppers can return home without having a brush with a rickshaw wheel, or bumping into a car or recklessly driven human hauler or rickety minibus while trying to negotiate the streets as most prefer to cross the crowded streets on foot ignoring the foot over bridges. Some of the bridges like the one in front of Gawsia market remain occupied by vendors who also turned their steps into mini bazaars. A situation that forces pedestrians cross the street through a gap on the steel barriers on the road divider. Vendors have returned to the city centre and some streets following a drive to remove them from the pavements shortly after the two Dhaka City Corporation polls. A drive was conducted by the city authorities and the police in the Gulistan area on Tuesday. But they returned on Wednesay. This is because it is big business for local criminal gangs and their political patrons and police. They thrive on daily "toll" from vendors. By the middle of Ramzan, the situation is sure to worsen as the Eid shopping will peak, with people getting paid their wages and festival bonus.