NEWS reports said almost one million drivers are driving on the country’s roads and highways without valid licenses or in other words with fake licenses in total disregard for people’s lives and property. Not only does this pose a serious threat to public safety some estimates suggest it also leads to a large amount of revenue loss to the government. Moreover, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority’s (BRTA) disclosure sounds highly terrible when it says out of a total of around 2.3 million vehicles so far registered only 1.43 million driving licenses were formally issued to the motorists. It suggests that most of the drivers are running vehicles without valid licenses and the age-group of these fake driving license holders varies between 18 and 35 years. It corroborates to the fact that on an average, five to six out of every 10 motorists fail to show valid driving licenses when they are checked on the roads.
It makes clear the illegal driving license business now dominates the transport sector and it has been possible due to close involvement of some BRTA officials with young people seeking new driving license. In this case brokers obtain the licenses bypassing the driving tests. Reports quoted a traffic sergeant as saying that a stricter check would show more than 70 percent of public and private drivers without valid licenses are driving vehicles on roads and highways.
It is true that the Traffic Department is trying to combat the situation often fielding mobile courts. They also believe that the newly introduced machine readable driving licenses will be able to bring down the number of fake licenses to a large extent. But such malpractices are going on over the years losting over Tk 40 crore revenue loss of the government a year, in addition to Tk 15 crore in the loss of renewal fees.
But what is important is that the presence of brokers and illegal syndicates handing out fake driving licenses are not unknown to BRTA and other law enforcing agencies. They are operating in the corridor almost openly with the beneficiaries within the BRTA and outside down to the political level. So there is no crack down on the illegal business when the number of road accidents is only rising. Police data showed 2,311 accidents occurred in the country with 1988 killed and 1720 critically injured alone in 2014.
It is natural fake driving license holders are regular threat to passengers’ safety but the government is tolerating fake licenses under the political shelter of a particular Ministers and Trade Union leaders in the transport sector. This is illegal and a high crime and yet they are mindlessly allowing it at the cost of passengers’ life. One million fake licenses, this is enough. The government must crack down immediately and stop it.
