[sustran] Cart-pushers of Kathmandu

[SUSTRAN Resource Centre]

One more from the latest edition of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights'
newsletter, "Housing by People in Asia", No. 12, April 1999, which has
several items on transport issues.

A. Rahman Paul BARTER
SUSTRAN Resource Centre
P.O. Box 11501,  Kuala Lumpur 50748, Malaysia.
Tel/Fax: +60 3 2742590,  E-mail: sustran at po.jaring.my
Web: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2853/
The SUSTRAN Resource Centre is a not-for-profit organisation 
that promotes and popularises people-centred, equitable and 
sustainable transport with a focus on Asia and the Pacific.

The cart-pushers of Kathmandu

Thelagada is the Nepali word for push-cart, an ancient means of transport
which, along with donkey-carts and back-loaders, still carry goods around
Kathmandu. In a city of narrow lanes and maze-like alleys, push-carts can
carry goods where trucks can't, without polluting or using expensive fuel
imports. 

Cart-pushing is hard work, but offers ready employment to poor men,
especially new migrants from the hills. Thelawalas work in teams of two,
one steering and one pushing the load, and cluster around the city's
wholesale markets, where a team can make 100 to 150 Rupees for carrying a
full load of construction materials, foodgrains, furniture or dry-goods one
kilometre. For a cart-pusher, better health and stronger legs means more
loads and more income. They all rent their carts, on a contract basis, for
500 or 600 Rupees a month, and take home around 2,000 Rupees (US$35) a
month, most of which goes to families back in the village, while the
thelawalas curl up and sleep on their carts at night. 

But Kathmandu's remaining 346 thelawalas are finding less space and greater
dangers on the streets, increasingly filled with motor vehicles. A 1998
study on push-carts by Nusha Raj Shrestha blames a decline in push-carts on
transport planning and investment in Kathmandu, which has focused on
motorized transport, ignoring the needs of older, more sustainable forms of
transport, like the thelagadas. 
(Contact ACHR for more details about Nusha's cart-pusher study. Asian
Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), Secretariat, 73 Soi Sonthiwattana 4,
Ladprao 110, Bangkok 10310, Thailand. Tel. +662 538 0919, Fax. +662 539
9950, e-mail: achrsec at email.ksc.net)