THE outgoing country director of World Bank (WB) Johannes Zutt’s comment that to resolve the nagging traffic congestion in Dhaka city it must have one single institution to implement plans to bring results appears to be a good advice for the government but the question is whether the government is capable to create such an institution and run it. His observation that traffic congestion on Dhaka roads eats up much of people’s productivity, time and energy. Everyone in the capital — from ministers to ordinary citizens —has been facing this problem that need to be resolved. Creation of a new institution and developing government leadership capacity and institutional efficiency to deal with the problem therefore deserve consideration. But the fact is that who care the WB advice, the government is working to take up big projects where corruption is eating up the major part of the fund, even the WB funds without proper accountability. It is no doubt that the traffic problem of Dhaka city is like any other metropolitan cities and to resolve it as the WB chief suggested there is no alternative to creating a single institution to deal with the issues now so many institutions are looking after so many services. There must be institutional change in changing situation where the government must increase institutional capacity at all level to handle new problems. He spoke from his two and a half years experience when he tried to improve the city traffic system, but failed. In his views a number of organizations like two Dhaka City Corporations — from one previously, Rajuk, Roads and Highways, WASA and BRTA need to coordinate their actions from a single platform to get results. Activities like city streets widening, developing pavements, policing city traffic to enforce discipline and remove unfit transports from city, traffic light and manual trafficking need coordinated action from a single authority. But there is no single institution to tackle the problem. He said convincing every single institution to adopt essentially the same plan at a time is very difficult while six, seven or eight institutions are engaged to handle city traffic and related work. His observation that Bangladesh needs to increase competency at all institutional level to become a middle-income country deserves consideration but the problem is as we see the political leadership which lacks the ability to run a modern state. It is rather wasting time and energy of the nation in political fights. It is not that we do not have competent people to do what is right for the capital. But the government needs to listen and act on good advise.
