In surprise raid, KMC & police pull down plastic from Esplanade hawker stalls

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation and cops on Thursday conducted a surprise check at Esplanade and carried out a drive on the pavements along Jawaharlal Nehru Road, removing plastic sheets that hawkers there had been using to cover their wares. Most of the shops, where the anti-plastic exercise was carried out, are close to entry and exit gates of metro stations.
According to a KMC official, it was decided at the town vending committee held at the civic headquarters earlier this month to keep a vigil on the use of plastic sheets by hawkers in the Esplanade-New Market zone.“We had alerted our officials and police to keep a watch on the major hawker destinations and monitor if hawkers there are using plastic sheets abundantly. On being informed that a section of hawkers at Esplanade are still using plastic, in violation of hawking rules, we asked police to conduct a surprise raid on the Esplanade area and remove them,” said a KMC senior official.

According to Debasish Das, a town vending committee member and a hawker union leader, as decided at the meeting, vendors will be asked to remove plastic sheets from the hawing zones or else police and civic officials will be compelled to remove them. “This rule is being enforced at all hawking hubs—Gariahat, Hatibagan, New Market,” Das said.
A section of traders at New Market pointed out that despite repeated requests made to the civic authorities and police, hawkers around the heritage market not only used plastic sheets to use as shades on their shops during the day and left them in bundles close to the market gates at night. “What will happen if a fire breaks out at night when there is hardly any vigil at New Market? These highly inflammable plastic sheets will do irreparable damage to the market,” said S S Hogg Market Traders’ Association president Ashok Gupta.