Bangabazar Fire: Traders want support to get back on their feet
Bangabazar shop owners are looking forward to today's meeting between their association and the city corporation in which decisions will be made about how the shop owners will run their businesses in a makeshift arrangement before Eid.
The meeting will also decide on compensation for the thousands of traders who lost everything in the April-4 fire.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The traders want to start over and want to know what assistance the government will provide.
"We had expected a brisk business ahead of the Eid. But the fire ruined everything," said trader Rakib Uddin.
Like Rakib, around 3,000 traders want to start the business on the ground where the three-storey Bangabazar Shopping Complex stood.
Representatives of Bangladesh Shop Owners' Association are to sit with Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh.
Dhaka district administration is making a list of affected traders. A long queue of shop owners was seen at the information centre of the administration yesterday.
Names of the shops and shop owners, details of the NID cards and trade licences, and business cards were being recorded at the centre.
Those who lost their trade licences to the fire brought their NID and business cards.
As of yesterday, there were around 2,000 traders and shopkeepers on the list, officials said.
Meanwhile, smoke was still coming out of the rubble yesterday, five days after the fire, and the smell of burning clothes persisted in the area.
Around 400 yards away from the spot, traders opened some 50 makeshift shops on a nearby road.
Lt Col Tajul Islam, director (operations) at Fire Service and Civil Defense, said, "The smoke is coming out from the clothes buried under the debris and burnt corrugated iron sheets. But there is nothing to be afraid of."
The shop owners' association sold the damaged iron rods and corrugated iron sheets to a contractor named Omar Faruk for Tk 40 lakh. Employees of the contractor were seen taking those away on trucks.
Nazmul Huda, president of Bangabazar Complex Shop Owners' Association, said the money will go to a welfare fund of the affected traders.
He told a press conference that goods worth Tk 1,000 crore were lost to the fire.
Meanwhile, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Khandaker Golam Faruq yesterday said police were investigating whether the fire was the result of a conflict between groups of traders over the construction of a multi-storey at the site.
He said there was a dispute among the businessmen of Bangabazar over building a multi-storeyed building at the complex.
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