Less than 10 per cent of the rickshaw-pullers working and living in Dhaka city round the year have health cards to seek services from urban primary healthcare providers, reveals a PPRC survey.
However, only one or two of the 1,200 rickshaw-pullers surveyed in October had been infected with Covid-19, although over 60 per cent reported some other illnesses in their families in the previous three months.
About 40 per cent (38 per cent) of the city’s rickshaw-pullers became unemployed during the corona-induced lockdown, the survey found. Ninety nine per cent of them resumed rickshaw-pulling job once the lockdown was withdrawn.
According to the PPRC study of rickshaw-pullers of Dhaka city,87 per cent of them live in Dhaka city with their families and 55 per cent have no financial linkage with their villages.
“Unlike common perception, the rickshaw-pullers are not transient residents in Dhaka city and rickshaw-pulling is a stable job. So, these people deserve services,” PPRC Executive Chairman Hossain Zillur Rahman said presenting the findings of the survey at a webinar on Monday.
About 94 per cent do rickshaw-pulling as year-round occupation, shows the survey. Average duration of rickshaw-pulling was said to be 10.6 years.
The economist observed that improvement in the urban poor’s economic and service opportunities is the larger concern, more than the pandemic impact.
Rob Yates, Executive Director at the Centre for Universal Health in London, emphasised public financing for universal health coverage.
He said Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina could utilise this pandemic to introduce universal healthcare services without financial hardship for people.
In Bangladesh, vulnerabilities of the health system proved to be doubly acute for the urban poor during the pandemic, Mr. Zillur Rahman explained.
The survey on rickshaw-pullersfound that almost 60 per cent (59 per cent) of them said they did not have the health cards and 32 per cent said they did not know anything about the health card system.
They earn Tk 136 on average a day and 56 per cent of them have an additional earner in the family. Seventy per cent rickshaw-pullers had taken no milk and 26 per cent no meat during the pandemic, said the survey indicating their nutritional status.
Executive Director of Society for Environment and Human DevelopmentPhilip Gaindescribed the conditions of the marginalised and excluded communities in society as “appalling’ during the current crisis.
He mentioned that about six million people of ethnic communities, tea communities, Harijans, sex workers and transgender people, Bede, Rishi, Jaladas, Kaiputra, Biharis and other groups are far left behind in accessing healthcareservices.
Appreciating the findings of the survey, Senior Secretary and Member of General Economics Division at the Planning Commission Shamsul Alam said the government would take more care for healthcare and education for the poor in the development plans and programmes.