Badrul Ahsan :Nearly one million drivers are plying vehicles on the country’s roads and highways without valid licences creating serious threat to the lives, property, and causing a large amount of revenue loss to the government. According to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), a total of around 2.3 million vehicles have been registered with the office till August, 2015. At the same time the authority issued only 1.43 million licences to the motorists.The BRTA data also showed that the number of driving licences issued by the authority across the country is almost half of the total registered vehicles.Also worrying is that majority of these drivers are driving public transports and are aged mostly between 18 and 35 years.Sources at the Traffic Department of Police said on an average, five to six out of every 10 motorists fail to show valid driving licences when checked.They said, many of the drivers, in connivance with a section of BRTA officials and brokers, obtain licences bypassing driving tests which can also be treated as fake.”It is really worrying that in most cases we cannot find more than four original licences out of ten when checked,” a traffic sergeant told the New Nation Sunday preferring anonymity.”If we become strict over this illegal practice then more than 70 per cent of public and private transports would be stuck in garages for want of drivers which might not be sustainable,” he added.However, the department is trying to bring down the illegal practice through organising mobile courts and regular and sudden drives, a high official at the traffic department informed.He also said that issuance of newly introduced machine readable driving licences would help bring down the number of fake ones. Meanwhile, the dilly-dallying of BRTA and law enforcement agencies in issuing and checking of driving licences causes over Tk 400 million loss to the government against issuance of license and over Tk150 million as renewal fee every year, sources said.BRTA charges Tk 400 for issuing of every new licence and Tk 150 as renewal fee every year.The BRTA, however, expressed the hope that the scenario will see a change soon as the office has introduced issuing smart card driving licences where an electronic chip has been embossed on which no middleman or brokers can do any unfair means.”Issuance of fake licences in connivance with BRTA officials and others have almost halted after we have introduced ‘smart card driving licence’ at the end of 2011,” BRTA director Sudhanshu Shekhar Biswas told this reporter.He said about half a million such driving licences have been issued within the last two years (years 2012 and 2013) which proves positive impact of the new system.According to Bangladesh Police (Headquarter) data, 2,311 road accidents occurred across the country during January-December period of 2014 which led to the death of 1,988 people and critical injuries to 1,720.”The scenario is more terrible as many of the accidents occurred in rural areas were not register with us,” a high official at the police headquarter said.The official cautioned that if the concerned authorities do not take immediate measures to bring the situation to a tolerable level, then the situation may go out of hand in the years ahead.
