On 17 August 2026, Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) brought together hawker leaders, police officials and journalists to Nagar Bhaban for a view-exchange meeting on a new way of managing street hawking in the capital. Chaired by DSCC Administrator Md. Abdus Salam, the meeting laid out the first details of the Hawker Management Policy for Dhaka City 2026, a policy that will shape how thousands of hawkers earn their living in the months ahead.

What the policy asks of hawkers

Under the new system, hawkers will need to register formally with the city corporation. Registration comes with a one-time fee of Tk 5,000, an annual renewal of Tk 2,500 and a monthly charge of Tk 3,000 for space use and waste management. Once registered, a hawker will receive a barcode or QR-coded digital ID card fixing their business location and hours and registration will be tied to the designated location d so that hawkers cannot shift elsewhere to do business. Applicants must be Bangladeshi citizens aged 18 or above and the city expects the system to be running within two weeks.

Clearing the roads, protecting the footpaths

Hawkers will no longer be allowed on the main road; only footpaths and spaces wide enough to leave a clear path for pedestrians will hold a fixed, limited number of registered vendors. Playgrounds, open fields, places of worship and cemeteries stay off-limits altogether. To make room for hawkers who cannot be fitted into designated zones, the city plans to gradually introduce holiday markets on Fridays, Saturdays and government holidays (7 am to 5 pm) and night markets in commercial areas (6 pm to 10 pm). Officials also said thirty percent of allocated hawking space will be reserved for women and hawkers with disabilities and that hawker leaders and police will be consulted before space is finalised in busy hubs like New Market and Gulistan.

Administrator Salam also warned hawkers against paying informal “rent” to shopkeepers or influential individuals, some reportedly as high as Tk 15,000, saying hawker associations should instead be the ones keeping order in designated areas. Hawking without a licence or outside a designated boundary will lead to eviction and cancellation of registration and cancellation of registration.

Hawkers get a seat at the table

StreetNet’s affiliate LIE, represented by National Coordinator, Farida Khanom, used the meeting to press two points on behalf of hawkers: that the fee structure be reviewed to make it easier for vendors to afford and that a national hawker policy be developed with hawker representatives themselves at the table, not decided for them. Her intervention is a reminder that a policy built to clear the streets has to be built with the people who work on them, or it risks pushing vendors further into precarity instead of protecting their livelihoods.

Why this meeting matters

Dhaka’s hawkers form one of the city’s largest informal workforces and past efforts to “clean up” footpaths have often meant eviction with little consultation or protection. This meeting stands out because it puts registration, fixed hours, women’s and disability quotas and a check on illegal rent-seeking into an actual policy framework and because it opened space for a hawker-side voice in the room. The real test will be in the implementation: whether the fees stay affordable, whether the promised markets and quotas are delivered on the ground and whether hawker associations are genuinely consulted rather than informed after the fact.

What to expect next

The registration system is due within two weeks, so the coming period will show how ready DSCC is to roll this out fairly and how well hawkers understand what registration will require of them. LIE plans to keep pressing on the fee structure and the call for a national hawker policy and will continue monitoring how registration, space allocation and enforcement play out in practice, especially in high-traffic areas like New Market and Gulistan.

This article was written by Tahajud Islam, Media Activist member of the StreetNet Media Network for LIE.