Although there are 20,000 rickshaw vans along with other motorised vehicles in Barisal city, only 130 rickshaw pullers have licenses for manually driven transport.
Drivers by their own do not take license from the City Corporation as they are not aware they need to, but owners of rickshaws are doing it after coming to an agreement with the transport department of Barisal City Corporation in a bid to evade high taxes, it was alleged.
Apart from not having licenses, the drivers even do not know about driving and traffic rules, making road accidents a common phenomenon.
More than 20,000 rickshaws ply the city’s roads, said Badal Chandra Shil, superintendent of the transport section of BCC, adding that of those, 12,000 have licenses while the remaining 8,000 are illegal.
Owners have to pay an annual fee of Tk320 for rickshaws and Tk60 for driving-licenses for each rickshaw puller.
It is fact that owners do not renew licenses of more than 50% percent of rickshaws, Badal said, adding that the excessive number of rickshaws are creating traffic jams, causing accidents in the city as they are unaware of the rules.
If BCC starts a drive against the rickshaws and their drivers the owners association and workers union put pressure on the city corporation and threaten to go on strike, as there are not a sufficient number of mechanised public transport facilities in the city except the manually driven rickshaws, BCC Mayor Ahsan Habib Kamal told the Dhaka Tribune expressing resentment.
Abdul Karim, a rickshaw puller, said they had heard about the rickshaw-license, but never heard about the rickshaw driving-license.
Tapan Das, one of the rickshaw garage owners in the city, said owners are not interested in taking or renewing their licenses, fearing harassment by city corporation officials.
Md Manik, president of the rickshaw drivers’ union, said as most of the rickshaw pullers were illiterate, ultra-poor, and come from river eroded and storm affected areas, the system for obtaining a driving-license for a manually driven transport should be evaded.
