Villains or victims?

In Dhaka's urban transport system, buses, including minibuses, employ over five million people and account for almost half of the passenger trips. But the bus workers, who constitute a large share of the transport workers in Bangladesh, are not the most highly regarded members of society. This is not without reason.

Most Dhaka residents—both pedestrians and users of vehicles other than buses—have very likely had at least one perilous encounter with bus drivers at some point. Bus drivers are notorious for negligence on the road; moving buses running over civilians is a common occurrence in the city. Bus drivers' driving skills, or lack thereof, are constantly criticised. Moreover, we have all heard of their drug abuse on duty, whether to stay awake while driving at odd hours of the night or simply for recreational purposes. These factors make it hard to hold much sympathy for the bus drivers.

Dhaka's public transport system is far worse than those in most other metropolitans around the world, even though the capital is one of the most populous cities on earth. The sector is regulated and enforced primarily by six different governing bodies, and it is highly disorganised, giving rise to many problems on the road. This article focuses on the issues relevant to the bus transport workers: drivers and helpers.

If one has ever had to endure catching a bus to go from Point A to Point B within Dhaka, one would know what an ordeal it is—long waits, long lines, long commutes, and the uncertainties and risks in the entire process. We are aware of the structural limitations of Dhaka's transport system—for example, limited roads and high concentration of population. However, often we blame bus drivers and helpers for much of our woes on the road. But how much do we know about their realities?

Firstly, there is a complete lack of coordination among the bus services and their routes with no centralised schedule. At the highest level, companies purchase route permits from the government, which they sell to different bus owners to operate as many buses as they choose to on the specified routes, under an umbrella company name. The bus owners then rent out the buses to independent drivers. There is no track of how many buses are being commissioned by different owners under the same company or on the same route. The lack of an integrated route system and the lack of coordination among bus owners and drivers mean that no buses follow a set schedule, which directly impacts the passengers who use the services. Therefore, multiple buses can be seen operating from one stop at almost the same time, and at other times, there is no bus for a long time from another busy area. It is easy to blame the bus drivers in this case, but as can be understood, the situation is beyond their control.

Second, it is evident that passengers' convenience or safety are not priorities for the drivers. Instead, their focus is on outrunning other buses, as well as other smaller vehicles, on the streets. This is even more dangerous given that designated bus stops are few and far in between, and that there are no bus lanes on the narrow roads. But why do the bus drivers in Dhaka drive so recklessly? Transport is a formal sector, and yet transport workers, even the bus drivers, do not have formal contracts. To maximise their profit, bus owners offer no formal employment contracts to transport workers and rather rent out the buses and charge as high as three-fourths of the drivers' total revenue. The driver works long hours to make sure that they have some decent income after the expenses, including bus rent, payment to the helpers, and fuel. To maximise their income, the bus drivers drive as fast as possible to complete the highest possible number of trips per day and try to carry as many passengers as possible during each trip. With insufficient traffic control and little regard for traffic rules among the public, these tendencies make the buses extremely dangerous for both bus passengers and other commuters on the road, as the driver speeds through the unruly Dhaka traffic and lets passengers in and out while on the move.

Bus drivers receive little to no social protection and have no labour rights. Though new minimum wages were set for workers in the transport sector in 2019, its implementation remains a challenge because workers, except for BRTC employees, do not have formal contracts. Apart from BRTC buses, most public buses operating in the city are privately owned. The situation was even more dire for the bus workers when the pandemic hit, as they had no income and had little savings. The economic impact of lockdowns on bus drivers was grave. With no formal contracts to begin with, they did not really receive any support from their employers, let alone the government. A lot of them thus had to resort to alternative means of subsistence.

Even though bus drivers' trade unions and owners' associations collect some funds from transport workers as part of their welfare fund, workers have never reaped the benefits from the fund. This practice has been going on since before Covid, seemingly being saved for a rainy day. When the rainy day did eventually arrive during the pandemic, those funds were nowhere to be found. Neither the owners' association, nor the transport workers' federations provided any support to the workers. We also found that trade union leaders and owners of the transports are often the same, meaning the bus owners essentially run the trade unions themselves. Therefore, workers' independent unionism without the influence of bus owners does not seem to work in the transport sector.

We see bus drivers and helpers on the roads driving recklessly, risking passengers' lives, crashing into other vehicles. But they are helpless in the crux of a mafia-like system that is the bus transport sector. If they had decent working hours and working conditions, perhaps they would not be falling asleep behind the wheels or taking drugs to stay awake while doing night duty. If they were not pitted against each other to put food on the table at home at the end of the day, maybe they would not drive so recklessly, trying to fight the bus next to them to get to their destination faster. If they had formal contracts with proper wages instead of the current mechanism, which makes them spread themselves thin and be reckless, maybe they would be more conscious and responsible drivers.

Bangladesh is undergoing rapid growth, developing massive infrastructures, and building new roads, railways, and highways to upgrade the transport system, improve people's commute, and alleviate traffic congestion. But these improvements in the transport ecosystem are likely to be futile if the transport workers are deprived of their basic rights.

Raeesa Rahemin is a research associate at Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD).