Hundreds of students of different educational institutions protested on Thursday for the second day in the capital demanding justice for the killing of Notre Dame College student Nayeem Hasan raising calls for enforcing road safety measures. Students first blocked roads at Gulistan where the boy was killed by a Dhaka South Corporation (DSCC) dustcart and the agitation spread to almost all major city points like Motijheel’s Shapla Chattar area, Farmgate, Uttara Azampur, Asadgate, Mirpur causing huge traffic congestions. Reports said the DSCC dustcart driver had no driving license and lacked experience. DSCC has over 300 dustcarts but only 86 licensed drivers to operate the vehicles. The remaining dustcarts are operated not by trained and regular drivers.
We would say the responsibility for this killing lies with DSCC and it must be held accountable. Students have rightly demonstrated in front of the DSCC building and the South City mayor has expressed solidarity with the demands of the students to punish the reckless driver. But is there discipline among officials or they are usually with party politics and corruption. The driver must be punished the Mayor must explain how efficient he is in supervising the activities.
As we see the city traffic police is allowing people without license to drive vehicles that cause sudden deaths or injuries to pedestrians. We understand some owners of private vehicles engage unlicensed drivers for inadequate wages. But an organisation like the city corporation has no shortage of funds and no reason to engage untrained drivers.
We know that thousands of crores of taka is being wasted in the name of city cleaning every year which is mainly grabbed by powerful ward commissioners, officials and union leaders. We are appalled to see how the DSCC is being run. There must be some accountability in this respect. We recall students of Dhaka city and other educational institutions all over the country organised mammoth demonstrations bringing traffic to a halt for several days in 2016 following the killing of two students under the wheels of a bus.
The government had promised to enforce traffic rules but it has not implemented the promise. The government does not care lying and doing nothing. Highly responsible positions are available to party locals at a price. So the government is in the hands of politically loyal incompetent people and anti people bureaucrats. This combination is proving doom for the country.
We know the black sheeps but we do not know who run the government from behind.
