The effects of COVID19 on public and paratransit drivers in developing countries: A case study of Bangladesh and Nigeria.

Introduction: Public and paratransit services in low- and middle-income countries were severelyhit by COVID-19 and related mitigation measures. This has affected both passengers and serviceproviders. While there is now an abundance of studies investigating the effects on passengers, theliterature on the impacts of the pandemic on drivers or service providers is scarce. As such, thisstudy investigates the implications of the pandemic for commercial passenger vehicle drivers inthe global south taking one South Asian country (Bangladesh) and one African country (Nigeria)as case study countries.Methods: The study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) qualitativeapproach to explore and explicate the subjective experiences of drivers using semi-structuredinterviews. Using purposive sampling technique, thirty participants were recruited betweenMarch and April 2021. The recorded interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed usingNVivo software.Results: The analyses identify key challenges faced by drivers into five distinct themes includingpersonal and social, physical, and operational, health and wellbeing, governance and regulation,and bad enforcement and policing related challenges. Participants reported immense hardshipdue to the bans on operations and lack of passengers, eliminating or reducing their only opportunities for earning a livelihood. There was a consensus among participants that they wereabandoned by their governments during the pandemic and were left with no other choice than towork in risky situations. They either had to use the little savings they had or borrow money tofeed their families, further reducing their opportunities for the future. Apart from facing reducedincome, debt crisis, and unsustainable workload challenges, drivers reported mental healthconsequences of the pandemic including depression, suffering anxiety, fear of risk infection andhelplessness.Conclusions: This research concludes the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak and its followingcontainment measures on the health and wellbeing, personal and working lives of public andparatransit drivers in developing countries are substantial. The pandemic has seriously affectedtransport workers, which also amplified earlier inequalities. Development of non-discriminator

Transport Services Resilience in the Global South in the Era of COVID-19: Lessons from Nigeria, Bangladesh and Uganda

The impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the transport sector and the corresponding mitigation policies have been widely investigated across the world. There were uncertainties regarding the virus and its role in the context of transport. This paper examined the resilience of transport services in three cities of the Global South during the pandemic while focusing on three main areas: (1) the impacts of COVID-19 on transport services; (2) COVID-19 related challenges of the transport services; and (3) the necessary corrective actions undertaken by transport services to manage the spread of COVID-19 and future pandemics in cities. A series of expert stakeholder workshops were conducted in the cities of Owerri (Nigeria), Kampala (Uganda) and Dhaka (Bangladesh) between December 2020 and January 2021. The aim was to seek input from city planning officials, transport policy experts, transport operator associations, civil society and the academia, among others on how the pandemic affected mobility in these cities and to identify the areas of consensus and conflict. The findings revealed that captive users, who relied heavily on these transport services were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 mitigation measures, consequently resorting to alternative modes of mobility including walking. When the lockdown measures were gradually eased, the pandemic exposed the severe inadequacies in the operation of transport services, particularly related to adherence to health and safety guidelines, carrying capacity, fare structure and organizational/administrative limitations. The need to ensure that transport systems are prepared for future pandemics is urgent, but also is the management of transport systems in cities of the developing world