More than a thousand owners and pullers of battery-run rickshaws staged a protest yesterday following the vehicle’s ban on the streets of the port city.
Starting the demonstration with a procession, the angry protesters barricaded the entrance to the city from the Dhaka-Chittagong highway and lay siege to the residence of Chittagong City Corporation Mayor M Manjur Alam.
They also demanded that the battery-run rickshaws be allowed to run on the city roads from today, as well as licence for said vehicles.
Police and local sources said Chittagong city was completely disconnected from the Dhaka-Chittagong highway from 11:25 am to 2pm due to the demonstration.
The outrage came when authorities concerned instructed the owners of the battery-run rickshaws to take their vehicles off the roads by August 30, followed by a High Court-issued ban on the vehicle in Dhaka and Chittagong cities.
In protest of the ban, the owners and pullers of battery-run rickshaws gathered under the banner of Chittagong Rickshaw and Battery-run Rickshaw Chalok Shongram Parishad and staged the demonstration.
They took position in front of the Golden Container Limited near the City Gate area, Chittagong city’s entry point, around 10am and began their rally to press home their demands.
However, at the end of the rally, in a sudden change of plan, the protesters put up a road block at the city’s entrance and lay siege to the mayor’s house, which is near the City Gate, said Tanvir Arafat, additional deputy commissioner of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (West).
Police tried to disperse the protesters away, but they held their position on the road.
Later, representatives of the battery-run rickshaw owners’ association sat down in a meeting with police and the mayor at his residence, where they decided to have a meeting with the Chittagong Metropolitan Police commissioner today.
However, Abdul Kader Majumder, president of the association, warned that they would launch a more intense movement tomorrow if today’s meeting did not produce any fruitful solution.
Assured of today’s meeting, the protesters withdrew the blockade from the city’s entrance and the mayor’s residence around 1:45pm. The traffic movement from and to the port city resumed around 2pm, the additional deputy commissioner said.
Asked about the association’s demand to allow the rickshaws, Mayor Manjur said: “The ban has already been ordered by the High Court, so the city corporation cannot do anything in this regard.
“However, taking to the streets will take us nowhere. We can sit together and try to find a solution that will suit all parties involved,” he said.
No untoward incident was reported during the demonstration, but commuters suffered traffic congestion as a result of the blockades.
