Bangladesh News

THE pavements along the city streets are in a most chaotic state, unkempt, craggy, and worst of all, occupied by squatting vendors, shop-fronts, ticket counters, welding gears, bits and pieces of construction materials, fallen rubbish from house-tops, and sometimes, sewer spillage from manholes. Add to this, the diminishing ledges or shoulders of thoroughfares, the pedestrians have nowhere to go. Thousands of walking people are an integral part of city traffic but that being congested all around, the pedestrians look for elbow room on the pavements. But the pavements meant exclusively as walk-ways have lost their character, so the pedestrians get thrown back on to the streets.

The situation is made intensely chaotic when the buses stop by at random to pick up or off-load passengers. We think the roadside anarchy will be reduced if the bus stoppages are not allowed in and around traffic intersections; in fact, farther the stopovers are from traffic thickets the better.

Who is in charge of keeping the pavements clear of obstructions? Obviously, the city corporation. The heart of the problem lies in utter lack of responsibility on the part of the ward commissioners who turn a blind eye to the setting up of assorted businesses on the pavements, manifestly the worst form of impingement on easement rights regarded as sacrosanct in modern societies. Admittedly, there is the pressure for making a livelihood in the city, and the local leaders, for fear of losing popularity, tend not to interfere with it.

But the ward commissioners can wield their influence at the community level to ensure that the pavements remain free and not littered with garbage, construction material or vocational appliances. It is a pedestrian rights issue that calls for display of minimum civic sense by the people around. But as for the right to livelihood of the unemployed, we must adequately address the agenda for relocating hawkers in designated vending zones in different places in the city.

The pedestrians have a set of duties also. Rather than dangerously waving their hand to stop a moving vehicle to cross roads, they must habitually get to use overbridges; and where there is none, be patient and walk a little to cross a street from a safer point. We are firmly of the opinion, however, that there should be more of zebra crossings that are conspicuously absent at busier city points.