60 percent street vendors are victims of extortion: Study

"Some 45 percent of Dhaka's 130,000 hawkers regularly pay 'toll' to police, eight percent to perpetrators of violence, four percent to local student leaders and three percent to anybody whenever it was demanded," disclosed the study report that was presented at a workshop on hawkers in the city.

Bangladesh Occupational Safety, Health and Environment Foundation organised the workshop, which was also told that 46 percent of the street vendors in Dhaka were permanent while the rest were seasonal hawkers but nine percent of the total were women.

The study also found 29 percent street vendors as illiterate, seven percent with minimum literacy, 24 percent studied from class VI to SSC level and one percent up to HSC to level.

The monthly income of 12 percent vendors ranges from Taka 400 to 1,000, 25 percent earns Taka 1,000 to 2,000, 23 percent earns Taka 2,000 to 3,000, 10 percent earns Taka 3,000 to 4,000, seven percent earns Taka 4,000 to 5,000 and eight percent earns Taka 5,000 to 6,000, the report said.

Speakers at the workshop noted that 52 markets calling them as hawkers' markets were erected in the city to rehabilitate the street vendors but most of them were occupied by the influential people identifying them as hawkers.