Hawker encroachment: New Mkt traders threaten token shutdown

Kolkata: Shopkeepers and traders at New Market threatened to call a token strike and shut down the market for a couple of hours if the KMC market dept failed to control hawker encroachment in and around the zone. The SS Hogg Market Traders' Association gave the civic body time till Monday morning to show intent, and asked the police to arrest the culprits involved in the assault on shop employees by hawkers.They also lodged an FIR with the local PS after Thursday's assault.
After the "inaction" of the market dept despite memorandums, meetings and pleas, and the Thursday's incident near gate 18, where a couple of New Market stall workers were brutally beaten by some hawkers, shopkeepers on Friday assembled at the Golghar, the rotunda where the market's 4 main corridors converge. They marched to the office of the market superintendent and escorted him to the spot where trouble erupted. There, they served the ultimatum to the civic body."We want our voice to reach the mayor. We urge him to step outside his office and look at Bertram Street. Half the carriageway is occupied by hawkers. All the market entrances are encroached," fumed Ashraf Ali.Trader association's Uday Kumar Shaoo said: "We for years urged the civic body and the govt to act. At times, drives are carried out in the morning that are mere eyewash. The hawkers return and occupy the stretches in a couple of hours. And now, they are audacious enough to prevent shopkeepers from unloading goods."In fact, the majority of the traders who attended the meeting at Golghar expressed their concern over the shocking incident of launching an attack on the stall workers on Thursday.According to a KMC market dept official, despite letters sent from the mayor's office to the New Market PS, asking the cops to keep a close watch on the growing encroachment on carriageways and book the errant hawkers, no effective steps were taken in the past 2 months. "The last letter was sent from the mayor's office to the OC of the New Market police station on Dec 30. We are still waiting for effective action on their part," said the civic official.Hawker Sangram Committee chief and Town Vending Committee member Saktiman Ghosh felt the civic body and cops needed to be more watchful and take the matter seriously."The hawker-trader conflict here is taking a turn for the worse. If we don't sort out relevant issues now, the entire area will turn into a war zone," he said.