Battery-run rickshaws flout court ban by plying in Dhaka pockets
FAISAL MAHMUD, Dhaka
The civic bodies on Wednesday decided to ban rickshaws on three major thoroughfares of the capital, but implementation of the plan could well be put to the test as is apparent in the case of battery-run rickshaws. Despite a four-year-old ban by the High Court (HC), these battery-run rickshaws, popularly known as engine rickshaws, are still plying in some pockets of Dhaka. A few years ago, these engine rickshaws had flooded the city, but now they are operational only in some areas like Mohakhali, Wireless Gate, Chairman Bari, Tajmohol Road and Bongshal. These rickshaw operators pay bribes to local police and operate mostly in the alleys and by-lanes of the residential areas, as The Independent found out.
Anwar Hossain plies his engine rickshaw in residential areas of Wireless Gate in Mohakhali. I pay Tk. 1,400 per month to the local police so that I can run my rickshaw. I usually ferry passengers up to Banani Bridge. If I go past that, the police will seize my rickshaw, he said.
Anwar also said around 140150 engine rickshaws are operational in the area. This is my own rickshaw. I keep it in the Karail slum. Most of the rickshaws are kept in that slum as we recharge the batteries of our rickshaws there, he added.
He explained that most of the rickshaw operators are also the owners of their rickshaws. Some owners rent out their rickshaws, but the rates are not too lucrative for the rickshaw-pullers. A regular rickshaw-puller needs to pay Tk. 100150 per day to his owner, while an engine rickshaw-puller needs to pay Tk. 300350, he said.
An engine rickshaw can be operational only within a restricted area. So, such a rickshaw-puller cannot earn more than Tk. 500 per day. If he has to pay Tk. 300 to the owner, he is left with only Tk 200, explained Anwar.
Running the engine rickshaw business is not at all profitable, rued Mojnu Shah, owner of five engine rickshaws in Bongshal area. Two years ago, I invested Tk. 16 lakh to buy 24 engine rickshaws. Now, I am left with only five, he lamented.
I have incurred great losses in this business. I wanted to run the business in accordance with legal norms, but I couldnt do so since no legal registration process was available, he said.
In April 2013, when I bought these rickshaws, I could not get those registered as non-motorized vehicles because the Dhaka South City Corporation did not recognize my rickshaws in that category, he also said.
Finally, an official from Honli Limited, from which I had brought the rickshaws, suggested that I should rent rickshaw licences from the Dhaka Mahanagar Rickshaw Malik Samity. That is precisely what I did, he added.
Mojnu said at that time many owners of regular rickshaws started converting their old rickshaws into motorised ones, simply by adding a motor and battery. Shops in Karwan Bazar, Sutrapur,
Hatkhola and Dholaikhal in Dhaka sell motors for Tk. 6,000 each and batteries for Tk. 7,0009,000. Also, a new motor rickshaw is available for Tk. 60,000 to Tk. 65,000.
But after the HC ban and subsequent drives organised by law enforcement agencies, almost all those rickshaws were taken off the roads. Some of the owners sent their engine rickshaws to the district towns. But even there, drives were conducted against the rickshaws. Most owners suffered great losses, Mojnu said.
He further said the engines of some of the rickshaws were fitted to easy-bikes operational in many district towns and villages.
Meanwhile, large-scale engine rickshaw producers like Beevatech Ltd have stopped manufacturing battery-operated rickshaws since 2014. Beevatech Limited, an Uttara-based company, first marketed the improvised three-wheelers in 2011 by simply fitting rechargeable batteries to the traditional rickshaws.
This was, of course legal, and we had a government-approved patent for this design. We took permission from the industries ministry and the Board of Investment, said Saidur Rahman, managing director of Beevatech, the inventor and largest manufacturer of motorised rickshaws in Bangladesh.
The rickshaws made by Beevatech did not have batteries like the ones the banned easy-bikes or other engine rickshaws have. Easy-bikes or other engine rickshaws have five large batteries that require Tk. 60 worth of electricity every day. Our designs require four small batteries that only need Tk. 20 worth of electricity, Rahman said.
He also said after the ban by the High Court, they have stopped manufacturing the engine rickshaws.
Lokman Hossain, director (engineering) of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), told The Independent that they conducted massive drives after the HC ban and ensured that no engine rickshaws ply on the roads.
On July 3, 2014, the HC had banned the plying of mechanised and battery-run rickshaws across the country as the vehicles were being run without any licence. The HC bench of Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar passed the order after rejecting five writ petitions filed by rickshaw-owners.
Those rickshaws were not motorised vehicles because only an engine cannot make a vehicle motorized. Those rickshaws were dangerous because most of them used to run three or four times faster than usual, without having proper braking mechanisms. That increased the probability of accidents and we have received reports of many such mishaps, Lokman said.
When the BRTA official was told about the re-appearance of the banned vehicles in some of pockets of Dhaka, he pleaded ignorance. We are not aware of the situation. It is possible that some individual garages are operating these rickshaws. In our two-month-long drive in 2014, we made sure that no such rickshaw could ply on the road, he said, adding that they will look into the matter.
IK
