Dhaka E-Rickshaw Workers Strike for Licences, Lower Fees and Livelihoods
Battery-powered rickshaw, van and easy-bike workers brought central Dhaka to a standstill on Monday, November 9, pressing a 12-point charter that links legal recognition to the right to earn a living. Jago News reported that workers rallied at Purana Paltan, marched toward the Secretariat and met police barricades before a delegation submitted a memorandum to the prime minister. The protest followed days of mobilization at garages across the capital.
The Rickshaw-Van-Easybike Workers’ Union is demanding vehicle registration, driving licences and workable route permits, alongside an end to seizures, towing charges and harassment. Organizers also want workers represented in any body that rewrites the rules, a livelihood-protection law, legal charging points and stands, access to low-cost credit and subsidized rations. A Bengali-language Dhaka Tribune report said the union wants registration and annual renewal charges capped at Tk1,000.
Image source and licence: Ifteebd10 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
A fight over who pays for formalization
The confrontation comes less than two weeks after the Local Government Division gazetted new city-corporation rules. Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha said the framework makes registration and fitness certification mandatory, sets a five-year registration term and limits registrations to five vehicles per national identity card. Reporting on the gazette put the one-time fee at Tk8,000 for a two-passenger vehicle and Tk10,000 for a four-passenger vehicle, with annual renewals of Tk4,000 and Tk5,000. E-rickshaws are barred from highways, expressways, major bus routes and other restricted corridors.
Dhaka South began distributing application forms on November 3, but officials stressed that a form is not permission to operate. The city plans four zones, fixed routes, approved workshops and designated charging stations. Administrator Md Abdus Salam said the rollout would be phased rather than enforced through a sudden shutdown, according to The Business Standard. That assurance has not resolved the central question for drivers: who can survive the transition, and who will be priced or zoned out before a licence is issued?
Disruption, allegations and the union’s response
Monday’s action sharply reduced service in Mohammadpur, Shyamoli and other districts, leaving students and workers walking or paying higher fares. The Daily Star documented allegations that some protesters forced passengers from vehicles and cut electrical wiring on rickshaws that continued operating. Those allegations should not be blurred into the union’s stated position: a union leader told bdnews24.com that organizers had issued no instruction to stop vehicles or remove passengers and said participation was voluntary.
Formal regulation can improve safety, limit dangerous conversions and create lawful charging infrastructure. But regulation is not socially neutral when the people expected to finance it live on daily fares and often rent rather than own their vehicles. A high entry fee, renewal charge, technical modification and restricted route can operate as a collective exclusion mechanism even when each rule is presented as an administrative safeguard. Worker representation is therefore not an optional courtesy; it is part of designing a system that can actually be obeyed.
Battery rickshaws occupy the space left by an unequal transport network: they connect dense neighborhoods to schools, markets, bus stops and metro stations at fares many residents can manage. Monday’s disruption demonstrated their economic importance precisely because the vehicles vanished. It also showed why a durable settlement must protect commuters and dissenting drivers while addressing seizures, arbitrary costs and the insecurity of informal transport labor.
What comes next
The immediate test is whether the government answers the memorandum with negotiation or enforcement. The workers’ demands now sit alongside a broader wage fight in Bangladesh, including the garment workers’ Tk32,000 minimum-wage claim before the national board. In both sectors, formal policy is being contested from below by workers insisting that modernization cannot mean transferring its costs onto those with the least bargaining power.
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