Editorial Page
Safeguarding the rights of rickshaw pullers
By Md. Masum Billah
Fri, 6 Jul 2007, 12:03:00

The passage for plying rickshaw in the city streets is getting narrower day by day. Does it mean that we are heading towards development? Or does it show the real improvement of our traffic system? The answers will not be so straightforward and direct. The presence of rickshaw in our cities and towns is the genuine reality. It was the necessity of time to flood our cities and towns with rickshaws and again time may approach when the rickshaws will disappear. Now the question is whether we have reached that stage or time to keep the rickshaws in the museum or we are forcibly trying to make that situation at the cost of million's bread? By enforcing laws and threatening the rickshaw pullers, this grim reality cannot be denied. When traffic system will develop and people will have enough vehicles to reach their destinations, the slow moving vehicles like rickshaws will give salute to the cities. Things seem that rickshaws are made to give salute to the cities by force.

If someone observes the office going hour and office breaking up hour in this city, one cannot but say that the presence of rickshaws in many parts of the city is a must. How people hurdle with each other and compete to get on board the public vehicles easily in the city of Dhaka easily registers far less number of vehicles than needed. This is about long time journey from one part of the city to another. In the small distance public transports usually don't take the passengers and the passengers cannot make even a little room for getting on board the vehicles.

Then they remember the necessity of this slow moving but environment friendly vehicles. When you see no CNG agrees to take you to your desired destination even after standing and waiting hours together reminds you how useful the rickshaws are! You have decided to go to somewhere with your wife and children, definitely you cannot make suitable room or passage in the bus to have seats close to each other. Your private vehicle is rickshaw. You cannot afford to hire a CNG and CNGs have become scarce.

In this situation riding rickshaws proves the alternative. In some roads some luxurious buses have been introduced to ease the burden of passengers but in all the roads it has not yet been implemented. So, in these areas suddenly banning rickshaw pulling does not show any sound reason. The streets of Chennai see considerable number of CNGs and the fares are also like rickshaws. This city has removed rickshaws as the CNGs have taken the place of rickshaws. Without making ample arrangements for easy movement, we cannot and should not remove rickshaws suddenly and emotionally.

When a road remains rickshaw free, is it fully immune of traffic jam? No. Look at the road of Sonargaon crossing. What does it say? No two minutes at a time remain jam free. The clean and half western road in front of Chief Advisor's Secretariat always sees traffic jam. On the other hand, Dhaka Cantonment roads experience rickshaw pulling but in different lanes following certain regulations. So, removing rickshaws from the sophisticated roads for removing traffic jam does not prove true always. Beijing, one of the busiest cities in the world, enjoys bi-cycle in its roads not one or two but hundreds and thousands. These bi-cycles ply side by side the mechanized vehicles showing a harmonious relation. The ways for moving bi-cycles have been divided by road dividers. We can also follow this example for plying rickshaw so long we fail to establish a moderate and sophisticated traffic system for most of the passengers.

In the language of social science it is said that the growing slums remains responsible for social crimes and making the city dirty. And the slums give shelter to the rickshaw pullers. When village people find an easy access to these slums, the stream of poor people will migrate to cities. All these are the realities and no reality can be buried by unreal and unreasonable step. When, easy money making will source and scopes will be made available in rural areas, rural poor will stop migrating to cities.

To cope with the fast growing population of Dhaka and other cites we need to establish over-bridges and underground ways as the existing roads don't see the scope for being further broadened. Money for this purpose can be collected in two ways. First way is to re-extract the money of the national plunderers and the second one through toll from the vehicles. More buses and small vehicles to be introduced both in the private and government sector. CNGs and taxies must be made available everywhere and in ample number. They must be given condition for getting the license that they are ready to go anywhere i.e. in place of rickshaws people can use CNGs. The easy availability of CNGs and similar vehicles and their reasonable fair will automatically discourage rickshaw plying in the streets. So long we cannot assure it, we have to question ourselves whether we have right to ban rickshaw pulling. Rather plying rickshaws should be made systematic without completely preventing them form plying. It's a matter of human rights.

When we cannot ensure human right, can we afford to break it?


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