HARIPUR, July 22: Terming rickshaws of the President Rozgar Scheme costly and with substandard machinery, over 11 rickshaw owners parked their tri-wheelers in front of the National Bank here and handed over their keys to the bank’s administration.

“It’s a faulty and loss-bearing vehicle, detrimental to our source of livelihood,” they said while talking to newsmen after handing over the keys to the manager of the National Bank, TIP branch, Haripur, as a mark of protest.

Under the recently launched President Rozgar Scheme, the NBP was assigned the task to finance and facilitate the purchase of tri-wheelers to jobless people within the age group of 18-45 years.

For this a beneficiary is supposed to deposit 10 per cent or Rs14,300 as a down payment against the total price of Rs1, 45,500. For this, four strokes CNG-fitted tri-wheeler the beneficiary has to pay Rs2,432 as monthly instalment and out of total mark-up of 12 per cent the beneficiary pays only 6 per cent while the remaining 6 per cent is subsidised by the government.

Talking to newsmen they said that some four months back they had drawn rickshaws of Qing Chee Company under the President Rozgar Scheme through different branches of the National Bank of Pakistan but from the day one rickshaws were inflicting financial loss on them rather than giving profit for what the idea was conceived by the government.

Chanzeb, one of the beneficiaries, accused the manufacturing company of making tri-wheelers with substandard material.

Another beneficiary of the scheme, Shamshad, said that rickshaw owners were made to spend Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 monthly on what he called it faulty machine. He said that spare parts of this model of rickshaw were costly and not available in the market.

“I feel more comfortable being jobless than using a poorly manufactured rickshaw under the President Rozgar Scheme,” said Shah Zaman, adding that he had decided to get rid of the tension he had undergone during the last three months.