Sources in Dhaka Transport Coordination Board (DTCB) said the decision was taken when the supervision mission of WB was in Dhaka from February 19 to March 4.

"The amount, which is roughly equivalent to 42 crore Taka will not be an allocation but will be used as a revolving fund," a high official of DTCB said. He explained that the PKSF would disseminate the fund among its partner organisations and those organisations would use it for micro-credit projects.

"Projects would be designed to make affected rickshaw-pullers self reliant by offering them micro-credit for different purposes while the fund gradually returns to the PKSF," he said.

The official also said that at present the PKSF was preparing a detailed plan of a mitigation project with the communication ministry and would get the money after submitting it to the WB.

A DTCB survey on around 15,000 affected rickshaw-pullers found that they were willing to switch to other jobs as they faced severe hardship in maintaining their families after NMT-ban on some major thoroughfares.

Earlier in February this year the WB suggested some Social Assistance (SA) packages to rehabilitate the rickshaw-pullers. The SA packages were aimed at relocating rickshaw-pullers to their villages in order to reduce their numbers in the city.

"We thought as most rickshaw-pullers were floaters they will be encouraged to settle outside Dhaka if they participated in a rehabilitation package," another DTCB official said. But he added that now it has been decided to rehabilitate them within Dhaka city as there were more options available in the capital for switching to other occupations than in villages.

When asked why the WB or DTCB were not taking up rehabilitation programmes themselves, the official said none of them were experts in the field of micro-credit. "WB thought that PKSF should do the job as it had the expertise," he said.

He also mentioned that the WB had earlier suggested some guidelines including age and number of dependants of the rickshaw-puller for the SA packages titled 'Emergency Asset Transfer', 'Targeted Micro-credit and Enterprise Training' and 'Targeted Skill Development Micro Enterprise and Job Placement Support'. "But now the PKSF is designing the programmes as the proposed guidelines were found complicated."

Officials of DTCB said that a study by the Human Development Research Centre in July last year showed that rickshawpullers operating within one and a half kilometres of roads that became off-limit to NMT, were most affected.

DTCB sources said that at first, the rehabilitation programme would cover those rickshaw-pullers who have suffered after the Kalabagan to Azimpur stretch was made NMT free. "But later rickshaw-pullers who use the Science Laboratory to Shahbag route would come under the project when that stretch comes under an NMT-ban. By that time the earlier micro-credit projects would become matured and the fund would be returning to the PKSF for next phase," said a DTCB official.