Sylhet hawkers stage sit-in protesting at eviction from streets
Published: 18 May 2026, 6:53:37
Hawkers in Sylhet staged a sit-in, blocking the busy road in front of Sylhet Nagar Bhaban on Sunday to demand an immediate end to harassment against them and approval to sit on the city streets with their businesses.
Hundreds of street vendors arrived in small processions from across the city chanting slogans in favour of their demands, and began the sit-in in front of the Sylhet City Corporation at about 100pm under the banner ‘Grassroots Hawkers Unity Council’.
Stating that their families survived on the income from their small businesses, the hawker leaders alleged that the police, mobile courts and SCC authorities had been harassing them for a long time in the name of various drives.
Claiming that conducting repeated eviction drives and seizing business goods is inhuman without arranging alternative initiative for running their businesses in the city, street vendors demanded an immediate end to harassments, permanent opportunities to run business in allocated specific spaces.
They withdrew the sit-in programme at about 3:00pm.
Earlier on Thursday, they also had staged a demonstration in the city to press home the demands.Media Consulting Services
Abdul Quaiyum Chowdhury, the SCC administrator and president of the district unit of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said in the afternoon that the city corporation already had already taken steps to accommodate around 2,000 hawkers in the city’s Makeshift Hawker Market following the present government’s assumption of office.
‘We have more plans in this regard. But, it is not acceptable to trade on the streets, causing inconvenience to the city dwellers,’ he commented.
