Information Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud stressed on giving lesson to young learners at schools on traffic rules. He said this on Wednesday while speaking at a meeting of TraumaLink, a community-based organization for road accident victims at the Jatiya Press Club.
“Every student at school-level should take lesson about traffic rules which they will follow for the rest of their life . . . Awareness would also be increased among the common people,” he said.
Traumalink organized the meeting titled ‘TraumaLink: The First Five Years of a Community Based First Responder System for Traffic Injury Victims in Bangladesh’.
Dr Jon Moussally, one of the founders of TraumaLink, Nirapad Sarak Chai founder and Chairman Ilias Kanchan, Joint Chief (planning) of Health Service Department of Health and Family Welfare Ministry AE Md Mohiuddin Osmani, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) Director of Training department Md Sirazul Islam, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Joint Commissioner (traffic south) Basudeb Banik and World Health Organization National Professor Dr Syed Mahfuzul Haque, among others, addressed the discussion.
TraumaLink Director Arup Saha conducted the meeting with its chairman Mridul Chowdhury in the chair.
Hasan said the BRTA should increase their training centers for drivers. The number of trained drivers will be increased if the BRTA certified training centers would provide training to them, he added.
He said the number of trained drivers in the country is less than the number of vehicles.
Praising the initiatives of TraumaLink for their services to the road-accident victims, the minister said about 35 percent injured people, as per a report of the organization, succumbed to their injuries as they were not given proper treatment within one hour of mishap.
The network of the organization will be increased, if the initiatives would spread in every nook and corner of the country, said Hasan, also Awami League Joint General Secretary.
The minister said, “We-the passersby- are also liable for road accidents. But the drivers are mostly liable for accidents. You can see in some recent road accidents that the helpers were running the vehicles.”
He said the government has passed the Road Transport Act recently and the act is being implemented by the law enforcers.
The report, published by TraumaLink, said road traffic injuries are a rapidly growing epidemic throughout the developing world.
During the first five years of operations in Bangladesh, the volunteers gave services to 2,383 injured people in 1109 road accidents. Trained first responders arrived at the scene within five minutes or less in 86 percent cases, it said.
