The Prime Minister’s Office yesterday directed the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) to take legal action against the drivers who are under-age and are plying vehicles without driving licence. It also directed the two concerned authorities to take legal action against the persons responsible for Sunday’s road accident that took lives of two college students, according to a press release of the PMO.
But in our view, the Prime Minister’s directive is too late and has no importance. The real problem is the high profit business of unfit and defective old buses by the powerful owners. The bus that killed the young boy and the girl did have fitness permit for running on the road. But in fact, those buses which have fitness permits are not fit at all. Such permits issued illegally under influence of powerful owners. It is known that most of these dangerous buses are owned by retired police officers or relations of political leaders. The traffic police cannot avoid responsibility for the killings by unfit buses. The fact is too many officials at too many levels are responsible for everyday’s deaths on the road. On the whole, the government machinery is corrupted and it is proving itself dysfunctional for saving lives of the people.
The decisions from PMO came amid ongoing students’ protest over the Sunday’s road accident that continued for three consecutive days. A bus of Jabal-e-Noor Paribahan ploughed into a crowd waiting for transport near the Airport Road flyover ramp in the capital’s Kurmitola on Sunday, leaving two students of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment College dead on the spot. At least twelve others were also injured in the accident.
Why the ministers allowing unlicensed drivers to ply the unsafe buses should not be held accountable? No minister feels responsible for running his ministry. The problems are created for incompetence of the incompetent ministers. The Prime Minister should have taken some ministers to task but she has not done so. The ministers are busy with propaganda of success everywhere to show how useful they are for the government. They rely on using police fear to suppress truth about their criminal negligence.
The buses in the capital city are not fit by a standard to ply even on the village roads, yet they exist in our capital city killing people and safely saying deaths happened accidentally. But the people are losing their lives for all round negligence by those to whom lives of others mean nothing.
It is not just the drivers who are at fault but the entire transport system including bus owners which look upon drivers as simply as tool which they can use cheaply for increasing profits. Police are paid illegal tolls to look the other way while those politically connected have no fear of justice and give their drivers leeway to do anything. Fitness permits are issued for money or influence without caring whether these buses are really going to be killers or not. Have we forgotten the murder of the NSU student and the student who lost his hand so quickly?
Meanwhile our Shipping Minister tried to make light about the accidents saying that even though 33 people were killed in India they did not protest as we are doing here. Why should we have to follow what other countries do or don’t? The minister, however, under pressure has expressed regrets.
It is precisely because of the perceived inhumanity of the government that the students came out angry and heartbroken at the callous killing of their dear fellow students. Angry and violent protest is the language that the government seems to understand. It is us telling them heartlessly not to take law into their hands when law does not protect them. The people in the government has become used to thinking that nothing happens for wrong and injustice as police power is there.
We shall urge the government to take the matter seriously. The management of projects is responsibility of the contractor. The government is for the people and their wellbeing.
