Staff Reporter :
Eighty-seven per cent public transports, including buses and minibuses, ply on the roads in Dhaka violating traffic rules and Over 77 percent drivers in the country don’t have driving licenses.
The platform, Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, revealed this at a roundtable at the Jatiya Press Club in the city on Saturday.
According to the Samity, only 16 lakh drivers out of a total 70 lakhs across the country hold Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) license.
Mozammel Haque Chowdhury, secretary general of the samity, said at least 1, 841 people were killed and 5,477 injured in 1,779 road accidents across the country till April 20 of this year.
Of them, 288 became physically disabled, he added.
In his written speech, the samity secretary general said, “These are not accidents; we want to call these planned murders. We are forced to use road in anarchic situation.”
The samity organised the roundtable when mismanagement of traffic system is being widely criticised following the death of Titumir College student Rajib Hossain in a tragic road accident in the city.
On April 3, the third-year student Rajib lost his right hand after it got stuck between two speeding buses trying to overtake each other in Bangla Motor area. He lost the battle for his life at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) on April 17. His death saddened the whole country and exposed glaring lapses in road management.
In another such incident, Khalid Hasan Hridoy, 19, a student of class-X, lost the hand on Dhaka-Khulna highway in Gopalganj on April 17. He has been undergoing treatment at DMCH since then but doctors sated his condition still critical.
Another student, Runi Akhter, of the University of Development Alternative (UODA) in Dhanmondi, got her leg crushed as a bus smashed her right leg against the base of a pavement in the capital’s Farmgate on April 12.
The latest victim of the accident is Rozina Akhter, 18, a housemaid, whose right leg got severed from her thigh in a mishap in Dhaka’s Chairmanbari area last night.
Kazi Riazul Haq, ChairmanofNational Human Rights Commission(NHRC) said “In reality we don’t have implementation of law in the country.”
He urged the government to take opinion of general people before publishing the bill of proposed Road Transport Law. The platform also proposed 10 recommendations to resolve the ongoing chaos in the transport sector.
The recommendations include- one-color bus service by separate companies to avoid sickening competitions among drivers, forming a team with skilled persons named Public Transport Service Authority, bring the activity of traffic department under accountability, steps against passenger harassment and fare disputes, include professional and skilled persons in issuance of route permit, ensure submitting the fines collected from traffic cases to the banks directly, stopping extortion, and freeing roads from hawkers.
Ganasanghati Andolan convener Zonayed Saki, Supreme Court lawyer Jatirmoy Barua, Design and Technology Centre (DTC) former executive director Dr Saleh Uddin Ahmed, prof of BUET Dr Mahbub Alam Talukdar also spoke at the programme.
