Illegal encroachments by hawkers cause concern in Dibrugarh

A Correspondent

Dibrugarh: The problem of illegal encroachment has become a major eyesore for the citizenry here. This issue, which has become the order of the day, has led to traffic congestion and inconvenience to pedestrians, besides taking a heavy toll on the town’s aesthetic.

There is hardly any major area of the town left where hawkers have not encroached upon the pavements while laying out their wares for sale. If the pathetic condition of the road adjacent to the fish market of the New Market area, where hundreds of people flock every day, exposes a tell-tale story of the abysmal failure of the civic authorities to bring about some order within the town limits, similar conditions across areas like RKB Path, Jhalukpara Road, Paltan Bazar, Naliapool, among others, only reinforce the charges against such authorities.

Finding vegetable sellers, for example, with their carts of vegetables eating into the surface area of the already narrow fish market road has become common. Even the fruit vendors in the fruit market of New Market have started extending their shops more than the permissible limit. While all this has resulted in traffic snarls and lack of parking space in these areas, it has led to blockage of certain short stretches of sidewalks running along busy roads from use by the pedestrians. The steps taken by the authorities concerned to curb such practices have been far from adequate so far. Although one gets to hear of sporadic eviction drives, probably well-intentioned as well, the efficacy of those is under serious doubt. The encroachers, as per many locals, seem to have entered into a tacit understanding with the ones in power which has clearly emboldened the former to keep bending the rules unabated.

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