WB Govt to rehabilitate hand-rickshaw pullers, owners

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said her government has decided to rehabilitate nearly six thousand hand-rickshaw pullers and equal number of hand-rickshaw owners, providing them with 'Green Rickshaws' in the metropolis.
"The decision has been taken responding to the demand of those hand-rickshaw pullers and owners, who turned jobless with the ban of this mode of transport in this city in 2005," Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat.
The details of the rehabilitation programme would be drawn out soon.
Earlier, some representatives of the hand-rickshaw pullers and hand-rickshaw owners called on the chief minister demanding their immediate rehabilitation.

State Chief Secretary Sanjay Mitra and Transport Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay were also present in the meeting.
For years the hand-rickshaw pullers and hand-rickshaw owners had been demanding their rehabilitation or lifting of the ban on the operation of hand-pulled rickshaws that was imposed in 2005 by the state government.
They even took to the streets here and demonstrated outside the Kolkata Municipal Corporation headquarters under the banner of 'Hath Rickshaw Bachao Manch'.