Dhaka city was almost paralyzed yesterday as students blocked transports at almost every road intersection protesting the killing of two students crushed by a bus at Airport Road and demanding resignation of Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan for his unsavory remark on the accident.
Assurance of punishment of driver and owner will have no value for the problem of safety on the road in the streets. There is whole network of corruption for the benefit of the people connected with testing fitness of buses and trucks, chaotic traffic system and the minister involve in union activities. Then there is the unaccountability of the government ministers and officials to the people. Never before the people were so helpless before the government. Not only in transport sector, everywhere the government is inflicted by chaos and corruption. The lies have become the government’s propaganda tool for development politics.
To be trustworthy the punishment for negligence in road safety and saving people’s lives must begin at the top.
For not having the ability to deal with the crisis, the government has declared shutdown of schools and colleges all over the country. This is an indication how the government has become disconnected from the people.
The solution lies not in shutting down the schools and colleges. For its dysfunctional ministries and flooding of corruption the government itself is coming to a grinding halt. What is needed is overhauling of the government for it to be pro-people, honest and efficient.
Meanwhile protest has spread in other cities such as Chattogram, Sylhet, Mymensing and other places yesterday slowly giving it the nature of a nationwide movement of students for safety on roads and against rough driving and killing of students and other way-side people mainly by callous bus and truck drivers.
Not surprisingly people’s support to the protesting students is overwhelming. They believe students are protesting for a right cause, and they see hope in their children, being conscious of their own failure to check the worsening situation for human safety on roads and elsewhere.
The agitating children’s calm and orderly behaviour, brilliantly uncoordinated or unscripted, puts to shame the behaviour of our own authorities. Many social media posts speak volumes about the calm and orderly way in which they directed traffic in areas which were notorious for congestion — like the infamous New Market area, or the fact that they checked driving licenses to ensure that fake licenses would not be allowed in the streets, or even the fact that they were seen cleaning up broken glass on city roads.
All that the government could offer by way of solution is to pass a new law. It is a joke. The laws are important where laws are not abused for corruption and punishing the wrong persons. The government has successfully crippled the judiciary so that any law hardly offers protection against incompetence and corruption to be found everywhere in the government.
