Saleh Akram :
After repeated occasions of frustration and disappointment from the unruly and defiant road transport operators of the country, the government has formed a task force to bring back the order in this sector. Reports to this effect appeared in a section of the local press recently. Prior to formation of the task force, the government however made several attempts to enforce discipline in the sector by setting up enquiry committees to investigate into all major road accidents. The investigation reports that followed brought to light some inherent shortcomings in the sector. These included among other things, untrained or inadequately trained drivers, deliberate disregard for existing rules and regulations, unregistered and faulty vehicles. All these gave rise to widespread discontent among political leaders irrespective of party affiliations, experts, media and people alike. AS a result, the government constituted a task force recently with Home Minister in the chair with a clear directive to bring down fatalities to minimum. The task force has also been given the task of implementing the recommendations of different committees in this connection.
This is unerringly an honest effort of the government as it did not stop with forming enquiry committees and appears committed to do much more. Without questioning government’s commitment, it remains to be seen how far the task force is going to succeed in its mission to bring back the long lost discipline in road transport. Our experience with enquiry committees is far from being pleasant and we have also noted with great regret that findings and recommendations of such reports were either sidelined or ignored by the transport operators and road accidents continued unabated. And the government apparently failed to bring the offenders to book. In a situation like this it cannot be safely predicted that the task force is going to produce positive results.
With growing urbanization, expanding road networks and swelling traffic the number of road accidents is not unlikely to rise. But what torments us most is the unrestrained recurrence of similar fateful incidents every now and then. The government constituted high powered enquiry committees after every major road accident. But the reports and recommendations of these committees were bypassed and the overall situation did not improve. For instance, committees unanimously blamed untrained or inadequately trained and arrogant drivers (they are different sets of people) and their defiant attitude for the incidents. But despite unanimity of opinions among experts, no action followed which hurt the people and evoked irritation among them.
Increasing incidents of deaths and fatalities on our roads have already assumed tragic proportions if not numerically but emotionally. The problem needs to be addressed immediately with an emergency action plan of the government along with a strong commitment to implement the same. Looking at the bizarre spectacle of the scenario we only have a gnawing feeling of distress and contrition. According to reports from media, police, hospitals and families of the victims, 4,439 people were killed and 7,425 were injured in 3,103 accidents in 2018. More importantly, number of fatalities exceeded the number of accidents which further reflects the extent of tragedy. We must not forget that about 1.3 million people of the world die every year from road accidents and almost 3% of GDP is lost in small and mid-income countries as cost of accidents. Extent of health and social costs of the accidents are also immense. Political leaders including leaders of the ruling party, experts and civil society members regularly express their disappointment and annoyance on the issue. UN General Assembly also declared the decade from 2011 to 2020 as a ‘decade of action for road safety’.
In the aftermath of a series of tragic road accidents a sense of skepticism rules over us and we can not be certain about the success of the task force. We only hope that things will change this time. The government will assimilate all its resources to curb the trend of rising lawlessness in our road transport sector. Now that offenders in many other sectors are being brought to justice we can genuinely hope for a better future ahead. While standing by the recommendations of the experts we only hope the government this time will come forward with a strong resolve and the task force will be able to ensure safety on roads.
(The author is a media personality and his email ID is: [email protected])
