Rickshaws rule Dhaka roads

Dhaka streets are currently crowded by around 225,000 rickshaws or tricycles, of which 137,189 lack valid legal documents. Most of the village agriculture workers who come to Dhaka city in search of jobs have increasingly gone into this informal sector on a temporary basis. Only the Dhaka City Corporations (DCC) are entitled to issue license for rickshaws in the metropolitan area, but the issuing of new rickshaw licences were stopped in 1986. However, new rickshaws roll out on Dhaka's roads without a valid licence almost every day. Despite a ban on plying of the tricycles on Dhaka’s key roads, rickshaws have been roaming freely on them in recent years. Even rickshaws ply on these roads during the rush hours, jamming the wide roads ever so badly. In reply to a query on rickshaw ban on key roads, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) traffic control room said they had neither lifted nor relaxed the ban on rickshaw movement on VIP roads. According to Manjur Hossain, a member of Dhaka Rickshaw and Van Owners' Federation, about 0.9 million people are engaged in plying of rickshaws in the capital. He said there are currently around 6000 rickshaw garages in the mega city and about 0.1m men earn their livelihood by repairing rickshaws. Most of the rickshaws in Dhaka have number plates issued by two organizations – Dhaka Rickshaw and Van Owners’ Federation and ‘Muktijoddha Samannay Parishad’. But the numbers on the plates do not indicate any licence number; they rather represent membership number of the respective organizations, according to bdnews24.com.