The two-year project is likely to begin in May or June this year, Dhaka Transport Co-ordination Board (DTCB) Director (Admin) M Akhtar Hossain told a seminar on 'Livelihood status of rickshaw-pullers of Bangladesh' organised by The Good Earth, an NGO, at the city's IDB auditorium yesterday.

Already some 15,000 rickshaw-pullers have been evicted from the Mirpur Road, DTCB officials said, adding rickshaws will also be withdrawn in phases from five other major roads of the city, keeping the non-motorised vehicles only on the feeder roads.

The communications ministry and Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), an NGO, are planning the mitigation project under the WB framework. The project aims at rehabilitating the rickshaw-pullers either in Dhaka or in their villages by providing them with micro-credit and vocational training on their choices, Hossain said.

Poor diet, excessive labour, exposure to extreme heat, wind and rain -- all this goes against a sustained health of the rickshaw-pullers, Bangladesh Agricultural University Prof Dr Mazahar Ali said in his keynote paper.

He also pointed out that the school enrolment rate of rickshaw-pullers' children is very poor, only 57 percent, while the literacy rate of the pullers themselves is only 39 percent.

Ali, in his study found that about 2 million rickshaw-pullers and 40 thousand workers in rickshaw-related industries support the livelihoods of around 12 million land-less and hardcore poor people.

"Government must see that the low standard of the rickshaw-pullers' livelihood, education and health status improves, as they account for a big chunk of the population," Ali recommended.

Speaking as the chief guest, eminent economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud said the problems faced by the rickshaw-pullers are not isolated phenomena but a part of the overall poverty situation. "The rickshaw-pullers come to the cities mainly from the rural land-less families, which represent 40 percent of the country's people living below the poverty line."

Prof Mahmud said merely micro-credit will not work in mitigating the problems, rather it needs a master plan to effectively train and use the evicted pullers' skills in producing products or services that have demand in local or foreign markets.

He also suggested that limiting the ownership of rickshaws and their number in the city would help the rickshaw-pullers make a better earning, reducing health and livelihood risks.

The discussants in the seminar said rickshaw is an environment-friendly mode of transport. But it, being too labour-intensive, creates health hazards for the puller.

A sudden eviction of the rickshaw-pullers will also create an economic vacuum for them, leaving them in a vulnerable situation, they observed.

Discussants also pointed out that public buses have not yet replaced the rickshaws on the roads they were withdrawn from.

However, DTCB officials said rickshaws could not be replaced with public buses due to a dearth of time.

Some of the discussants were also of the opinion that there are too many private cars creating traffic jam and polluting the air, but the government does not take any action against them.