Driver Nurul Hossain sits in his auto-rickshaw on a sunlit afternoon in the Chhanua village of Banshkhali upazila in Chattogram. The vehicle gleams, but he seems tense.
“I took a loan of Tk 90,000,” the 32-year-old says. “In 40 weeks, I have to repay one lakh two thousand. On top of that, I had to pay a bribe.”
Over the past several years, cyclones in the Bay of Bengal have grown more intense. Rising water temperatures have spurred a surge in jellyfish, while hilsa catches have sharply declined. As a result, Hossain, once a fisherman, was forced to leave the profession in 2025.
Hossain isn’t the only one. Hundreds of fishermen abandon the sea every year as catches dwindle and incomes shrink, said Abdus Sukkur, President of the Banshkhali Fishing Boat Owners Association, which represents around 200 boat owners in the upazila.
Despite producing just 0.3 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Bangladesh ranks ninth on the 2024 World Risk Index of nations most vulnerable to extreme weather, according to the World Bank. The bank also expects climate change to turn nearly 20 million people into internal migrants and affect their livelihood.
Struggling to survive, many shift to other trades and end up staying there permanently. Armed with modest savings and heavy debt, some have turned to driving battery-powered auto-rickshaws. Others, finding no alternatives, are taking deadly risks.
For example, Sukkur noted that another local fisherman, Azizur Rahman, from a nearby village went missing on April 4 after a trawler capsized in the Andaman Sea while attempting to migrate illegally to Malaysia.
“The sea is no longer what it used to be,” Hossain says. “The storms come without warning, the hilsa has all but disappeared from our nets. For the last few years, we returned to shore with empty boats, again and again. In the end, I had no choice but to leave the sea.”
Researchers studying Bangladesh’s coast have been tracking these changes for years — the warmer Bay, the fiercer cyclones, the hilsa moving to waters fishermen can no longer reach. Hossain has not read any of those studies. He has lived them.
Bangladesh’s government does have policies in place to support people like Hossain.
Bangladesh’s national climate plan, NDC 3.0, states that special funds will be established to protect people who lose their livelihoods due to climate change. Loans will be provided on easy terms. Vocational training will be offered.
The recent Labor Reform Commission (April 2025) echoed this exact sentiment, strongly advocating for a ‘National Climate and Just Transition Fund’ and a social protection framework to shield informal workers like EV drivers.
Yet interviews with dozens of drivers running electric vehicles and officials from loan-providing NGOs suggest that these measures are yet to be implemented appropriately.
During a visit to the Hazari Dighi Par area of Dohazari in Chandanaish upazila on February 2, 2026, this reporter found long queues of loan seekers outside a cluster of ten non-governmental organizations.
Officials from all the ten NGOs confirmed that there were no special loans given for electric vehicle drivers. All they provide is an ordinary loan with a high interest rate of around 24 per cent.
“We give our regular loans. Loans for vehicles carry higher risk, so the terms are strict,” said an official from SKS Foundation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Alongside the high interest rates, loan-seekers often have to bribe officials as well. Hossain, for instance, had to pay an extra Tk 500 to get his loan approved.
In addition, two-thirds of the 25 auto-rickshaw drivers this reporter interviewed at a village market in southern Chattogram’s Satkania upazila in January said they had to pay bribes to secure loans.
Rahim Uddin, 45, is one such driver who paid the bribe by pawning his wife’s jewelry.
“Rich people take crores from banks and never pay it back. And if I am even one day late on an instalment, they come to my home and make a scene,” he said.
Much like some of the other sectors of Bangladesh, paying bribes seems to be an open secret.
“Beyond official costs, there are certain other costs. Everyone knows this,” an official at BASTOB, a Dhaka-based non-profit, smiled and said in response to a query about the bribes.
The high costs behind these loans are taking a toll on the livelihoods of drivers, many of whom used to work as fishermen.
About four dozen electric vehicle drivers interviewed for this report said that they spend half of their earnings towards repaying their loans, while the rest is split between charging batteries and feeding their families.
As a result, many drivers have stopped buying fish and meat in the past six months, while some have also stopped sending their children to school.
None of these drivers are aware of the government’s policies that promised subsidized loans for EV drivers.
Most of these drivers aren’t eligible for loans from traditional banks; as such, NGOs often become their only source of hope.
Still, without other earning options and the impacts of climate change intensifying, an increasing number seem to be taking high-interest loans and hitting the road, which has made making money even tougher.
“More vehicles means less fare, and now I’m struggling to pay the instalment,” said Sahab Uddin, a driver from Chattogram who recently left farming to drive an auto-rickshaw.
While the likes of Uddin and Hossain are struggling, wealthier buyers seem to be in line to receive benefits from the government.
The proposed Electric Vehicle Industry Development Policy 2025, prepared by the Ministry of Industries and posted on the ministry’s website for stakeholder feedback, proposes slashing the total tax burden on fully imported EVs— customs duty, supplementary duty and regulatory duty combined— from 89 percent to 37 percent.
Sultana Yasmin, joint secretary at the ministry’s policy, law and international cooperation wing, told this reporter that the draft is expected to be finalised within the year. “The use of electric vehicles in the country will grow in the coming days. The aim of this policy is to ensure that EVs and their components can be manufactured here in Bangladesh,” she said.
But economists say the benefit of that tax cut will not reach the men who actually drive most of Bangladesh’s electric vehicles. Dr Md Alauddin Majumder, professor of economics at Chittagong University, argues that the relief should have been directed toward those wishing to purchase small battery-powered vehicles, not toward wealthy importers. “That did not happen,” he says. In a country where a fully imported EV costs many times more than what an auto-rickshaw driver earns in a year, the tax break is, in effect, a discount for dealers, corporate fleets and well-off buyers— not for Hossain.
Bangladesh Bank official Chowdhury Liakat Ali, Director of the central bank’s Sustainable Finance Department, admitted that the country doesn’t have any specific project to promote EVs.
“If we manage to start micro-level financing, we might be able to support them,” he said.
To understand why, specific questions were sent to Finance Ministry Secretary Dr. Md. Khairuzzaman Majumder and designated information officers Senior Assistant Secretary Taslima Mostari and Senior Assistant Secretary Md. Shamsul Arifin on April 1, requesting an early response. None of them replied at the time of publication.
Economics professor Dr. Md. Alauddin Majumder of Chittagong University says: “Our banking system is now corporate-friendly. Large groups get loans easily; the poor do not. And in a market economy, issuing orders alone will not work— banks must be given incentives.”
In his assessment, if a bank earns 11 percent on ordinary loans, it will not agree to lend at 4 to 5 percent for EVs. The government must bridge that gap through subsidies, he argues.
Al Kaderi Joy, district convener of the Easy Bike Struggle Council of Chittagong, says: “The government makes policy sitting in air-conditioned rooms. Meetings happen with big importers. Nobody calls us.” He demands that instead of relying on NGOs, the state arrange low-interest loans through government banks.
For this report, written questions were sent via email on April 6 to the central offices of ASA, SDI, Coast Foundation, BURO Bangladesh, SKF Foundation, Bastab, SSS, RIK, SKS and Pratyashi— seeking their position on allegations of bribery, compulsory insurance and high interest rates. Each institution was given two days to respond. None had replied by the time of publication on May 05.
Nurul Hossain of Banshkhali knows the same arithmetic. Every morning he takes his vehicle out. In his mind, the instalment calculation never stops. He does not know whether his name has come up in any ministry in Dhaka. He does not know that something called NDC 3.0 exists, with promises written in it for people like him.
He only knows this: if the money is not there at the end of the month, the vehicle will be taken.
The government will perhaps announce at international forums that the number of EVs in the country is growing. Nurul Hossain’s vehicle is counted in that number. So are thousands of others’ across the country. But the story behind that number— the bribes, the crushing interest, the pawned jewellery, the fish and meat no longer bought— that story appears in no statistic.
[This story was produced with the help of Thomson Reuters Foundation. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher.]
