Xinhua, Cairo :
Dozens of the three-wheeled motorized vehicles known as “tok-toks” are moving around and randomly parking to get passengers in Giza’s Boulak el-Dakrour and Imbaba slums near Cairo, causing a massive traffic jam especially on narrow unpaved streets and avenues of Egypt’s impoverished neighborhoods.
The negative repercussions of the spread of such vehicles are not restricted to traffic congestion, as they dramatically affect education and traditional crafts with many teenagers dropping out their schools and skilled workers leaving their crafts for a quick income as rickshaw drivers.
Most of tok-tok drivers are teenagers or even children who dropped out “boring” schools and were allowed by their poor parents to do so for money.
With his feet hardly reaching the clutch and the accelerator, 12-year-old Osama looked weird while driving a “giant” three- wheeler in one of Boulak el-Dakror’s main streets with another teenager sitting near him at the one-person driver’s seat.
“I don’t like school because I don’t understand anything the teachers say,” the little boy told Xinhua, adding that he loves driving and he was allowed by his mother to work as a tok-tok driver.
For her part, his 34-year-old mother, Umm Osama, said that if the boy had liked school he wouldn’t be allowed to join this job. “He doesn’t like to study and he’s always absent from school to play on streets,” she explained, preferring to let him help earn money for the home expenses instead of having neither work nor school.
The “tok-tok community” is notorious for ill-manners, savagery and recurrent fights at their random, disorganized stops about turns and passengers.
Still, the picture is not so dim and there are some young rickshaw drivers who insist to continue school and complete their education, and they only work to help themselves and their parents with life expenses.
“I will go to high school, study science and then will join the medicine college to become a doctor,” Mostafa, 16-year-old driver who has just finished his last year of the preparatory stage, told Xinhua.
“As long as I keep away from bad people like those,” Mostafa said while pointing to a quarrel between young drivers on Zinin Street in Boulak el-Dakrour, “I will have no problem as a tok-tok driver and a student.”
The growing phenomenon, which appeared in Egypt a decade ago, perplexed those working in education and increased their worries about school dropouts in the most populous Arab country whose 40 percent of population are illiterate.
“There are a lot of absence cases because students continue their work as tok-tok drivers, which brings them a high income at such a young age,” said Mahmoud Aboul-Nour, Principal of Martyr Mahmoud Saqr Preparatory School in Minufiya north of Cairo, lamenting the phenomenon threatens further school dropouts and a higher illiteracy rate.
“We noticed behavioral changes with students who do that job due to mixing with ill-mannered people in that community,” the principal told Xinhua, noting that such students don’t pay attention to school because they know that a well-paid job is waiting for them without having to worry about education.
On one of ever-busy main streets in Imbaba neighborhood in Giza, 30-year-old Khaled Ali was waiting for passengers in the rickshaw he had to buy after he left carpentry due to recession.
“I am married with three children and there is no much carpentry work these days because of the political turmoil over the past three years,” Ali told Xinhua, arguing he had to leave his old craft and buy a three-wheeler to feed his family.
Another 25-year-old driver, Mahmoud Nassar, said that not all rickshaw drivers are illiterate and bad people. “I graduated from a technical institute and worked as air-condition technician, but there is general recession in the country so I should find a quick income instead of staying jobless.”
Even Abu Mohamed, 50-year-old accountant at a contractor company, bought a rickshaw to drive it after work and make some extra money for his family.
Aware of their various social problems, a previous interim government eight months ago had to ban the import of tok-toks for one year.
“Rickshaws don’t have plates, so if one is used in a crime it’s hard to find it,” traffic police officer Khamis Abdel-Hady told Xinhua, lamenting that three-wheelers don’t have licenses and do not abide by traffic rules. “It’s a disaster if they invade cities as they did in slums.”
Dozens of the three-wheeled motorized vehicles known as “tok-toks” are moving around and randomly parking to get passengers in Giza’s Boulak el-Dakrour and Imbaba slums near Cairo, causing a massive traffic jam especially on narrow unpaved streets and avenues of Egypt’s impoverished neighborhoods.
The negative repercussions of the spread of such vehicles are not restricted to traffic congestion, as they dramatically affect education and traditional crafts with many teenagers dropping out their schools and skilled workers leaving their crafts for a quick income as rickshaw drivers.
Most of tok-tok drivers are teenagers or even children who dropped out “boring” schools and were allowed by their poor parents to do so for money.
With his feet hardly reaching the clutch and the accelerator, 12-year-old Osama looked weird while driving a “giant” three- wheeler in one of Boulak el-Dakror’s main streets with another teenager sitting near him at the one-person driver’s seat.
“I don’t like school because I don’t understand anything the teachers say,” the little boy told Xinhua, adding that he loves driving and he was allowed by his mother to work as a tok-tok driver.
For her part, his 34-year-old mother, Umm Osama, said that if the boy had liked school he wouldn’t be allowed to join this job. “He doesn’t like to study and he’s always absent from school to play on streets,” she explained, preferring to let him help earn money for the home expenses instead of having neither work nor school.
The “tok-tok community” is notorious for ill-manners, savagery and recurrent fights at their random, disorganized stops about turns and passengers.
Still, the picture is not so dim and there are some young rickshaw drivers who insist to continue school and complete their education, and they only work to help themselves and their parents with life expenses.
“I will go to high school, study science and then will join the medicine college to become a doctor,” Mostafa, 16-year-old driver who has just finished his last year of the preparatory stage, told Xinhua.
“As long as I keep away from bad people like those,” Mostafa said while pointing to a quarrel between young drivers on Zinin Street in Boulak el-Dakrour, “I will have no problem as a tok-tok driver and a student.”
The growing phenomenon, which appeared in Egypt a decade ago, perplexed those working in education and increased their worries about school dropouts in the most populous Arab country whose 40 percent of population are illiterate.
“There are a lot of absence cases because students continue their work as tok-tok drivers, which brings them a high income at such a young age,” said Mahmoud Aboul-Nour, Principal of Martyr Mahmoud Saqr Preparatory School in Minufiya north of Cairo, lamenting the phenomenon threatens further school dropouts and a higher illiteracy rate.
“We noticed behavioral changes with students who do that job due to mixing with ill-mannered people in that community,” the principal told Xinhua, noting that such students don’t pay attention to school because they know that a well-paid job is waiting for them without having to worry about education.
On one of ever-busy main streets in Imbaba neighborhood in Giza, 30-year-old Khaled Ali was waiting for passengers in the rickshaw he had to buy after he left carpentry due to recession.
“I am married with three children and there is no much carpentry work these days because of the political turmoil over the past three years,” Ali told Xinhua, arguing he had to leave his old craft and buy a three-wheeler to feed his family.
Another 25-year-old driver, Mahmoud Nassar, said that not all rickshaw drivers are illiterate and bad people. “I graduated from a technical institute and worked as air-condition technician, but there is general recession in the country so I should find a quick income instead of staying jobless.”
Even Abu Mohamed, 50-year-old accountant at a contractor company, bought a rickshaw to drive it after work and make some extra money for his family.
Aware of their various social problems, a previous interim government eight months ago had to ban the import of tok-toks for one year.
“Rickshaws don’t have plates, so if one is used in a crime it’s hard to find it,” traffic police officer Khamis Abdel-Hady told Xinhua, lamenting that three-wheelers don’t have licenses and do not abide by traffic rules. “It’s a disaster if they invade cities as they did in slums.”
