Shop owners said the atmosphere inside the crammed markets housing about 2,500 stores turns suffocating during power cuts. Lack of fresh air inside the markets often makes the shopkeepers and workers gasp for air. When all lights of the shops are turned on, even the air produced by electric fans becomes overheated, they said.

When the four three-storey structures were built in 1984 (the regime of HM Ershad), the building designers did not take the ventilation aspect into consideration, traders alleged. The structures were built, with all sides closed, almost totally prev- enting the flow of fresh air from outside.

In the early 1980s when Rajuk handed the Karwan Bazar area over to Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) for maintenance, the DCC grabbed the opportunity quickly and built the markets 'without Rajuk approval, Rajuk sources said.

Now, most of the 10,000 businessmen and workers in the Karwan Bazar markets, who worked under these intolerable circumstances, commonly complain of asthma, jaundice, skin diseases, headache and chest pain.

"I have been suffering from chest pain since I started working here three years ago," said Hazrat, a grocer.

"Doctors in Dhaka Medical College Hospital last year suggested I work in open places to cure the pain," he added. Hazrat now comes out of the market for fresh air whenever he gets a break.

The traders said building additional structures has worsened the problem. The ground floor of the kitchen market is the most suffocating because of a one-storey extension to the building, Sarkar Rafi Uddin, general secretary of Karwan Bazar Shopkeepers and Hawkers Association.

"We talked to the mayor about their ventilation problem in the markets, but the mayor said it was unnecessary to do anything now as the entire Karwan Bazar would be shifted elsewhere," Rafi Uddin said.