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BRTA fails to limit number of tempos, autorickshaws

By Morshed Ali Khan
Autorickshaws and tempos, believed to be the leading agents contributing to the city's air and noise pollution levels.are sharply increasing in number In the absence of any official control.
According to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) sources, a large number of registered and unregistered autorickshaws are taking to the city roads every day and most of those do not meet the environmental standard in the country.
Although BRTA. last year, tried to curtail the number of autorickshaws and tempos in | four city corporations by dras-
tically limiting issuance of registrations, the move came lo a halt as a local tempo manufacturing company moved to the court and obtained an injunction against the move recently.
The tempo manufacturer challenged the decision to register 200 tempos against 3.500 autorickshaws annually and said it was 'discriminatory' against tempos. Taking advantage of the situation, thousands of these two-stroke vehicles are now getting registered across the countiy.
BRTA had set a ceiling of 30.000 autorickshaws. 2,000 tempos and 3,000 mishuks in the capital, it decided to issue registrations for 3,500 new autorickshaws, 200 new tempos and 300 new mishuks a year, subject to strict maintenance of the ceiling.
"We were determined to keep the number of these polluting three and four wheelers under control and were having good results during the implementation period," said a source in the BRTA.
BRTA had also suspended renewal of route permits, in the cities, of all these vehicles above nine years old and also the ones polluting the air above the environmental standard.
Although BRTA maintained statistics on registered autorickshaws in the country, sources said the actual number
■se vehicles were "surely u._.iy times that." Its documents showed that in 1996,
there was a total of 62,548 autorickshaws and tempos in the country. But officials admitted that in Dhaka city alone, the number might be around the BRTA figure.
"Fake registration papers, driving licences and other papers are so readily available that there is hardly any way to know how many of these vehicles are there on the roads," said a BRTA official.
Meanwhile, city hospitals, clinics, health centres and private practitioners' chambers are facing rush of patients having respiratory problems with the onset of the low rainfall season.
Doctors at the PG Hospital. Chest Diseases Institute. Dhaka Medical College Hospital and a number of private clinics said the rush of such patients was usual at this time of the year because the air pollution level rises sharply in the city.