Showers bring plastic back in hawking zones

KOLKATA: It took only a few smart showers overnight for plastic sheets in all hawking zones to reappear on top of the stalls on Saturday, bringing back the fire safety risk they present to their vicinity.
The canopy of plastic sheets was back in New Market, Gariahat, Hatibagan, Chandni, Brabourne Road and Canning Street after it rained on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.
After a rap from CM Mamata Banerjee, cops had not only instructed hawkers to move from the carriageway and leave two-thirds of the pavements for pedestrians but also remove the plastic sheets which pose fire safety risks to markets and residences nearby.
Under pressure from the law enforcement agencies, hawkers had removed the sheets. In some areas in Salt Lake the vendors even started operating under large umbrellas after removing their structures.
But much to the shock of traders, cops and civic officials, plastic sheets were out on Saturday.
“It has been raining so hard since Friday night. We don’t want our stock to get damaged,” said Bablu Ghosh, a street vendor in Hatibagan.
Some hawkers also accepted that the rain had presen ted them with an excuse to bring out the plastic sheets in the face of police crackdown. “They cannot force us to remove the sheets as we can challenge them on humanitarian grounds,” said Ashok Gupta, a vendor on Kalakar Street at Burrabazar.
On Brabourne Road plastic sheets were back, blocking the view of the pavements and the shops on the other side. On Canning Street vendors use the signboards and sheds of the shops they are blocking to tie the plastic sheets. At New Market vendors said their wares would get damaged if they didn’t use plastics. Even when the rain stopped the plastic sheets remained in place with no attempts to remove them.
In the past several blazes spun out of control due to indiscriminate use of plastic by hawkers. In Sept 2019, a fire from a hawker’s stall gutted a large portion of Bagri Market damaging goods and property worth several hundred crores. Earlier that year, a fire at a hawker’s stall in Gariahat gutted the building housing the Traders’ Assembly and the Adi Dhakeswari Bastralaya stores on the Gariahat crossing.
“These fires had spread rapidly due to the plastic sheets. We managed to convince the hawkers to remove the plastics during the crackdown. But the rain has given them an excuse to use plastic sheets again,” said an officer of Burrabazar police station.