Iqbal Habib, Member Secretary of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon
We along with the late mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation Annisul Huq, submitted a proposal to the government for bringing discipline to the public transport sector and the government accepted it.
Accountability is found wanting in the government mechanism. In spite of accepting the proposal, the government did not implement it in the last one and a half years. The frequent road fatalities are happening mainly due to the government’s failure to implement the proposal.
We proposed to the government for rearranging the existing 58 routes and whittled them down to six routes. There will an owner for each route like cooperative ownership. 15 different owners will operate their buses a route together. The money will be distributed among the owners in proportion to the number of buses. As a result, the competition among the buses will cease to exist on the same route.
At the same time, there will be no road fatalities if the city corporation authorities fix the spots for bus stoppage. However, the government failed to implement the proposal fully following the death of DNCC mayor Annisul Huq.
Bus driver, bus owner, road design and road management; none of the four is solely responsible for road accident. Drivers ply buses to earn a living, bus owners appoint drivers where they face different types of injustice, the drivers are forced to work extra hours and the drivers cannot take rest die to contractual monitoring. The drivers are threatened with dismissal from their jobs if they fail to deposit a certain amount of money at the end of the day.
Designs of the roads are faulty. The roads have been designed in a way where vehicles cannot move smoothly. The agencies tasked with managing the roads like the traffic police, RHD, BRTA have failed to implement the rule of law due to their duty negligence. Therefore, a carefree mentality has developed among the people.
Based on an interview by Mehedi Hasan, translated by Hossen Sohel