The quick succession of tragic accidents involving trains and buses gives us an impression that these two modes of transport run together. No, this is not so. We have railway tracks for trains and roads for buses, but due to unsafe level crossing, one after another very tragic accidents are taking place in Bangladesh. Just within a week, two such accidents took place. First, it was in Gazipur’s Maizpara area on Sunday when a train hit a bus killing five people and injuring 21 others and then again on Friday at Chattogram’s Mirsharai upazila when a train pushed a microbus carrying 11 teachers and students leaving them instantly dead.
Two things are very common in these two accidents, or in almost all accidents on level crossing: gatemen were not present at the time of accident, that is, they remained unguarded. As usual, after accidents, probe teams are formed and the relevant gatemen are suspended. Guard at Mirsharai has already been suspended. Suspension is all. And the same pattern of accidents on level crossing continues with railway authorities failing to ensure alerted level crossings for 24 hours all over the country.
However, if these two accidents happened in a different country, by now the railway minister would have resigned from his job voluntarily, no public protest was needed. But in our rather hopeless Bangladesh public protest fails to exert any pressure over the authorities that remain unmoved and continue to perform duties, unashamedly, so thick is their skin!
Apart from the dangerous neglect of the railway authorities, drivers of motor vehicles, the pedestrians, motor-bikers as well as rickshaw-pullers often display callousness while moving through a level crossing. But in most cases accidents take place when the railway guards and gatekeepers who are employed for maintaining signals and gates do not perform their duties properly. Therefore, for all the accidents on level crossings, the burden of responsibility primarily lies on the railway authorities, and for the recent accidents in Gazipur and Chottogram, they will have to take all the blame. The tally of deaths from these accidents is not small. According to data from Bangladesh Railway (BR) released in 2020, at least 419 people were killed and more than 2,000 sustained injuries in 4,914 train accidents that took place at different level crossings, over the preceding 15 years. According to the National Road Safety Council, there are about 1200 ‘illegal’ level crossings without necessary gatemen all across the country.
If this kind of anomaly exists and level crossings remain unguarded, we cannot hope to have safe level crossing in the country. Not much funding is needed to remove the broken gates and install a strong signalling system on the level crossing. If the government runs after mega projects for absurd display of development, these death traps known as level crossings will not be paid the necessary attention they deserve. Of this one can be very much sure.
