The DNCC mayor was speaking at a meeting Wednesday with the rickshaw and van owners and drivers’ associations, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and related bodies at the Dhaka North City Hall in Gulshan.
Atiqul said rickshaws should use the service roads and bylanes from Kuril Bishwa Road to Malibagh, and reassured the associations’ representatives by saying that rickshaws were being restricted on just 15kms of road altogether, out of 2300 km falling under Dhaka’s two municipal bodies.
He also reassured them of gradually taking up the fight against illegal rickshaws plying city streets. This would be done, Atiqul proposed, by providing QR codes – a digitally verifiable bar code that can be scanned by a smartphone - to the legal rickshaws’ owners.
The mayor also proposed building up a database of legal rickshawpullers, and assigning them ward-by-ward uniforms.
DNCC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Md Abdul Hai, Mafiz Uddin Ahmed as Additional Police Commissioner (traffic), Ward Councillors Liakat Ali and Jakir Hossain Bablu and leaders of rickshaw and van owners' associations were present at the meeting.