Investigating the Working Environment and the Hindrance Faced by Street Hawkers in Bangladesh: An Empirical investigation in Dhaka City

Abstract

The working condition of street hawkers in Dhaka city is not a pleasant scenario. This study is conducted to investigate their working condition highlighting corruption, the threat of e-commerce, lack of education, exposure to noise and people's perception of them. Several field surveys on Dhaka city have been conducted based on a well prepared questionnaire covering six places and we collected data on the noise level (Levels of sound were taken through a mobile app from 5 busy places of the city where street hawking prevails), amount of bribe, level of education and price variation with the online shop. We also conducted an online survey to determine people's perception of street hawkers. We find that 59.8% people are not aware of the condition the hawkers work in, where 57.4% prefer to shop from online shops over street hawkers and 42.6% were in favor of shopping from the street hawkers, 86.1% opined that they are in favor of the eviction of the hawkers and only 13.9% were in against the eviction. We also found that on average the hawkers pay about 100-150 taka per day as extortion money, the average level (Db) of sound in Mirpur, Newmarket, Motijheel, Gulistan, Savar are respectively 70.4, 71.2, 77.2, 71, and 70.6 (Db).

Keywords: Street hawkers, working conditions, exposure to noise, Dhaka city, Bangladesh

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-2-09