A NATIONAL daily report said on Sunday that 10 lakh rickshaws are unregistered across the country including 80 thousands in the capital city Dhaka and these rickshaws cover a third of total trips in the country. As per rickshaw-owners’ statement, they spend Tk. 25,000 to 30,000 in payoffs to government officials every year to keep rickshaws on the streets and many rickshaws now receive patronage from trade unions which is very alarming for the road transportation sector of the country.
A source said that the rickshaws in 1985-86 contributed 34 percent of the total value-addition by the transport sector in Bangladesh or roughly BDT 9840 million and it has increased to double the amount now; but the workers are not paid as much as the revenue has increased. Rickshaws account for more than half of Dhaka´s vehicles, carry 70 percent of its passengers, and 43 percent of the total passengers mileage. Everyday, about 7 million passenger-trips are made in Dhaka by rickshaws over a distance of 11 million passenger-miles. This is nearly double the output of London´s Underground. Dhaka is the slowest city in the world because of the uninterrupted growth of unauthorized rickshaws.
Prejudice leads people to blame the rickshaws for all the urban traffic problems and many social problems as well. The large numbers of rickshaws are not only a major cause of traffic jams but road accidents also in Dhaka and other parts of the country. It is also true that rickshaws are inefficient, in that they slow down the traffic. On fast roads, a slow-moving vehicle can, of course, greatly slow down movements of other vehicles.
A traffic count in Old Dhaka recorded 3500 rickshaws passing in one hour in one direction. This exclusively shows that rickshaws have been a great burden, especially for the Dhaka city. Increasing rate of rickshaw pullers in city are the cause for the increasing level of unemployment in rural Bangladesh. Poor people usually come to urban area for meeting up their poverty as rickshaw pullers.
Unregistered rickshaws are increasing day by day because of some money-seekers’ greedy mentality to follow unfair means. For this, the country is losing a vast amount of revenue. Rickshaws are now creating dual problems towards people and government. In this perspective, it would be better to take immediate action against unregistered rickshaws. Separate sections of roads in the city area could be reserved exclusively for rickshaws. Otherwise growth rate of rickshaws in Dhaka and beyond might be a formidable burden for the country.
However, banning rickshaws suddenly will not be an effective way to handle the problem. But our problem is the lack of control on the part of government agencies. A holistic approach keeping the question of rehabilitation of the rickshaw pullers vis-à-vis the down sliding of the rural economy in mind should be taken to get rid of the problem. The rickshaw problem in capital needs urgent attention. The rickshaws have to go from the capital city.
