Bangladesh is one of the youngest and poorest countries on earth. Overpopulation and scarcity of land are among the most critical problems confronting the nation. Dhaka is the capital and primal city of Bangladesh. It is dominant in terms of population concentration, economy, trade and commerce, education, and administration. Dhaka City is growing with accelerating rate but unfortunately transport infrastructure development of the city could not keep pace with the travel and transport demand of this growing population and area.
CNG auto-rickshaws are the fastest and comfortable vehicle in modern Dhaka. But the drivers of such vehicles are not that solvent till now though are a greater part of our society and economy. Since poverty alleviation is a major goal of the Government, thrust is being given on socio-economic development of the underprivileged groups. The main emphasis here was on adoption of one specific lower income group of people, surveying them regarding seven selected criteria: Family Members, Standard of living, Educational Information, Occupation, Health, Food & Nutrition and Monthly Expenditure and finding out their socio-economic life.
According to the responses from our selected 50 respondents, we could get some vital information regarding their lifestyle and socio-economic state which helped us to develop some relationships among their economic benefit and health, education, expenditure issues. The major part of these CNG drivers is from a rural group, so most of them have big or joint families. Such families have children and aged members too apart from adults. Having younger and older members in family incurs much expense unfortunately. In cases of these auto-rickshaw drivers, on one hand they always suffer from poverty and again the non-earning members incur some more costs. But being a part of the family, he has no other choice rather than taking care of the members. They get blessed if there are more than one wage earner in the family.
Standard of living of this income group is not so high that they can earn their bread easily. They work hard all day long, earn a minimum wage and keep cutting their coats according to the clothes. This is not that easy as they are to pay out a big amount to the vehicle owners from their daily income. If they could own a CNG auto-rickshaw of their own, they could do some improve in their standard of living. For that, some of them do keep few other external sources of income but most of them could not. Though they are from a lower earner group, still they are using few basic facilities these days like: electricity, gas, water from WASA and so on. Even they now try to drink filtered or boiled water and use hygienic sanitary latrines to save themselves from fatal diseases. This is one of the reasons for which unwanted death rate has been decreased among them. They are also trying to upgrade their status by using necessary home appliances like television, refrigerator, cable line, DVD players and so on.
CNG drivers for sure were never that much able or interested to have their academic education. But now they are aware than before, so many of them are sending their children to schools regularly. Percentage of being dropped out has decreased too. Most of them even showed dissatisfaction towards their profession but not interested to switch their jobs instantly.
Nowadays CNG drivers are showing much awareness in health issues too like: sources of drinking water, frequency of having medical checkup, death issues due to illness, maternal and child care, post delivery consultation, regular vaccination and so on. They prefer Shobuj Chata and Shurjer Hashi conveying health clinic for pre and post maternal care. The lower income groups are not even concerned about food and nutrition issue which is a must to serve the nation as an active nation though we found some different information regarding their food habit which represents that these people also becoming conscious about their food habit. Most of them take 2 or 3 meals a day but cannot take all those nutritious food due to poverty. .
In many cases, CNG drivers’ monthly expenses exceed their monthly income. Then they have to keep due certain bills and others. This keeps on hammering them. Not always can they manage money from other sources apart from CNG driving. Sometimes it is found that the previous month’s expenses and the present month’s expenses are in two extreme spectrums. Thus prediction in this unpredictable situation is of no use.
The amount of consumer surplus (economic benefits) arising from CNG Program directly benefit the vehicle owners. But those who are working heart and soul for it are not getting what they deserve. However, the experience shows that vehicle owners will not transfer a portion of consumer surplus to end-users. Therefore, intervention by Government and administration is required to ensure the removal of poverty, malnutrition, hunger, illiteracy, etc. which are largely concentrated around.
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