Yes I like to share some financial and social view regarding the road side tea shop all over the Dhaka city.

No specific infrastructure, no trade licence to other legal permission but all around the Dhaka city there are thousands of tea stalls. Dealing more million taka per day, we never think this whole income are going to the black economy government revenue department does not have any counting of this large income or expenditure sources.

How this is possible, Nannu Mia came in Dhaka city in 1995 when he was 16 years old. He started running a road side tea stall and now he already have 3 stalls of his own, one embroidery factory, and two auto (battery charged) rickshaw! This is the history of one Nannu Mia, and I just used Nannu Mia as a little review of a road side tea stalls owner, how and who are actually getting benefit of this type of stalls.

You can find them everywhere; Inside of the Sohrawardi Uddyan, opposite of Charukola Institute, every roads of the city and where not! If you observe them you can realise what number of customers they get every minute and what amount of profit they are earning!

I tried to know how much they are selling but they did not disclose it, but what I noticed, one person makes tea at a time five - seven cups and if you order the tea you have to wait for two/three minutes for round.

Yes this is the situation of the tea stalls inside of the Sohrawardi Uddyan. The same thing happens outside of TSC, Dhaka Medical College, even infornt of the hotels or beside the south Dhaka City Corporation office, or entrance of DMP DB conference center

Day night all around the clock, come at Farmgate and you will even find the working till late night.

The main customer of this tea stalls are the rickshaw pullers, the low income people, middle class people, students, political peoples, and mostly the service holders.

Police man, some local politicians or so called terrorists are direct or in direct beneficiary of these tea stalls, recently the market authorities and some other official give permission to setup tea stall in their compound and they take money from them in daily basis or monthly basis. If the tea sellers do not give or refuse to pay then the next day what happens to them no body can even realise! The owners do not want to take the risk, so they always manage them and pay as per their demand.

I tried to ask the city corporation officer why they are not enlisted this tea stalls or take them under the legal steps. I didn’t get any proper response!

What they are selling and who are promoting them, this is also very interesting. The condense milk company, the tobacco manufacturer directly promote them, i.e. if you buy 100 packets of X brand cigarette, you will get that prize or cash money back or some packets cigarette for free. Same as the condense milk selling company.

If one takes a shop in a shopping mall or in any other place inside of the city corporation, it is his duty to take the trade licence and TIN for his classification of the business but everyday these tea stalls are doing illegal business, for example, at Rampura police thana area as per my counting more than 500 small tea stalls established over here, in average they are selling more then 1500-2000 taka. You can easily understand how much are they selling all over the Dhaka city and how many stalls over there and how much they deal every year!

Through this writing I am not suggesting to stop this business and make a large number of people unemployed. But government and its so called authorities should take necessary steps to count them and this community can contribute on our economy. And I am sure that if government takes care of it then certain amount of revenue can be earned from this area and this money can be used for the citizens.