Rickshaws in Dhaka

Rickshaws were probably introduced to the city of Dhaka in the early part of the previous century. Those of us who have been brought up in Dhaka have seen its existence since childhood and it has become a part and parcel of our everyday life. It is by far the most common mode of public transport used by people of all walks of life.

To a certain extent, the existence of rickshaws may reflect the true nature of our socio-economic condition. Those who are involved in pulling rickshaws do mostly belong to the deprived class of the society. For a large section of these people, their poverty is the direct consequence of economic mismanagement and ill distribution of wealth in our society. Some of them have lost farms and land, others have lost their homestead devoured by river erosion. They have flocked to the capital in search of livelihood and more often then not end up pulling rickshaws because of scarcity of work in other avenues.

In many cases, self declared organisations like rickshaw league, rickshaws dal, rickshaw association, etc have brought their own fleet of rickshaws on the street by procuring forged license in connivance with a section of unscrupulous employees of the city corporation and some personnel of the law enforcement agencies have also turned a blind eye to this effect for obvious reasons compounding problems.

The unbridled growth in numbers of rickshaws resulting in the traffic jams and congestion that the city has experienced in recent times can be attributed to the fact that the government had totally failed to tackle the problem in time and enact an effective plan to encounter it.

Let the authorities make a comprehensive plan to tackle the rickshaw problem and bring sanity to our roads. Meanwhile, what will happen to the scores of people like Mrs Jahangir who had to sacrifice their much cherished dreams of not being able to give their children a better education through no fault of their own?

The authorities are encouraging the city dwellers to use buses in their day to day life. However, realistically speaking, buses do not ply on some of the roads which are off-limits to rickshaws. Besides, those roads where the buses do run remain so very crowded that there are little chances for ladies and school-age children to aboard them.

The hardship of the people who have no transport of their own for getting to their workplace, taking their children to school, going to the market and bazaars knows no bounds -- sometimes even changing their life forever, as is the case of Mrs Jahangir.

We urge the authorities to develop civilized public transport system so that the public has easy accessibility to them and may travel conveniently before taking any action to ban rickshaws from our major roads. Is it too much to ask for?

The author is a contributor to The Daily Star.