HEALTH STATUS AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITION: A CASE STUDY ON THE RICKSHAW PULLERS OF SELECTED AREAS OF DHAKA CITY

Abstract

In Dhaka city, rickshaw pullers are essential to maintaining urban mobility. Nevertheless, they are the most disadvantaged people in society. They have regular difficulties at work such as limitations on their activities, harassment from other drivers and the traffic police, traffic bottlenecks, and accidents. Poor people have moved from rural to urban regions in quest of a better living, better work prospects, and better social services because of rural poverty. Most of these migrants from the countryside are employed in the urban informal economy in petty retail commerce, transportation, manufacturing, construction, and domestic services. The rickshaw pullers of Dhaka, a significant occupational group in the urban informal sector, are the subject of this paper. Rickshaw pullers in Dhaka live a vulnerable life. Most of the rickshaw pullers are extremely underprivileged, with minimal education and few skills. They try to escape the terrible rural poverty by working as rickshaw pullers, who have relatively simple access to the urban labor market. The unsustainability of their livelihood is related to the extreme physical demands of the activity, which are unrealistic in the context of poverty and malnutrition, which results in high vulnerability to health shocks. The rickshaw pullers might be supported better through licenses, economic incentives, and by prioritizing their contribution to improving Dhaka's traffic system.