Safe roads only in words

After assuming office in 2009, the Bangladesh Awami League (AL)-led government announced that buses older than 20 years would be shortly withdrawn. In 2011, Obaidul Quader, also the president of road transport advisory council, took office of the road transport and bridges ministry.

Quader, after one year of taking office, came up with an announcement to withdraw all unfit vehicles. He made the same announcement in a meeting of the road transport advisory council in June of the following year, also the last year of this government's previous tenure.

Sometime close to the end of the tenure, minister Quader said, "We cannot do everything now even if we want to."

The AL came to power again after the 5 January elections in 2014 and Quader was handed over the responsibilities of the same ministry. Then, once again he made the announcement in a programme to withdraw unfit vehicles to ease traffic congestion in the Dhaka airport area. An 11-member taskforce, headed by the then chairman of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), was also formed.

A few days back, teenage students, who took to the streets after two of their fellows had been killed in a road accident on 29 July, showed the country that all those announcements made in the past nine years were just empty words.

Even the drivers of the vehicles of the cabinet members, high police or government officials do not have licences or if they do, they are date-expired.

Obaidul Quader is the road transport minister for the last seven years. The secretary of the ministry Nazrul Islam was chairman of BRTA, a regulatory body to control, manage and ensure discipline in the road transport sector, for three years. Current BRTA chairman Moshiar Rahman, who took charge two years ago, was a director of the body for six years.

The Mirpur office of BRTA controls vehicles in and around Dhaka. The in-charge of the office is also stationed there for the last seven years.

Media reports say the minister visited the works of mobile courts, got into buses as a passenger to check whether people are being robbed with extra fare. But he has not taken any initiative to resolve the main problems of the transport sector, ministry insiders say.

The ministry officials further said Quader, also general secretary of ruling Awami League, is hardly found at the office. Instead he spends much time on roads and attends party programmes. His personal assistants carry the ministry’s official files with them to get his signature.

Prothom Alo tried to reach the minister for his responses to these allegations. But, Obaidul Quader did not respond to recurrent phone calls or even answered to the short message sent to him.

Road transport and highways division secretary Md Nazrul Islam, however, told Prothom Alo that they do not have lack in effort.

"Maintaining discipline on the roads is not the responsibility of my division alone as several other offices of the government are also involved with the matter," he said.

Regarding anomalies in the fares, the secretary said, “I don’t agree with you that there are anomalies. This is your opinion.”

He further said the ministry did not take any decision about withdrawing older vehicles.

Former adviser to a caretaker government Sultana Kamal said, “The prime minister had given five directives to the authorities concerned to ensure safe roads ... Now we want to know which of those directives have been implemented.”

“If any of those directives have not been implemented, this only suggests the office bearers are careless... they have to answer why the people are not getting services,” she said. 

Dire straits of public transport in Dhaka 

Bus, CNG-run auto-rickshaw and rickshaw are three mainstays of public transport in the capital, says two Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) surveys done in 2009 and 2014 under the Dhaka Urban Transport Network Development Project. It says bus and auto-rickshaw contribute to as many as 87.40 per cent of road transport communication in Dhaka while bus alone makes 72 per cent.

The road transport ministry is to issue fitness certificates and route permits to the buses and fix the fares. But the transport owners and workers are not complying with the fare fixed by the ministry. Many buses are operating in the city without fitness certificates. Many do have it but they run in a shabby condition.

BRTA says there are 216,000 unfit vehicles in Dhaka. The authorities issue a fitness certificate after a vehicle meets 60 conditions. Except the technical side, 80-90 per cent vehicles are found unfit in terms of outlook.

Media reports say the late mayor of the Dhaka North City Corporation, Annisul Huq, took an initiative to bring the unruly busses under regulation. He then got a survey done by a group of experts. The study revealed that half of the running busses and minibuses in the city are not fit enough to ply on the streets.

As many as 14,000 auto-rickshaws have approval to run on the streets of the capital. At the beginning, the auto-rickshaws followed the government fixed rate of fare for two or three years. Now, they do not comply with any rule. The fare policy has now become a farce.

The ministry has increased the fare five times in the last 10 years ignoring the passengers' cause. The government even has extended expiry dates of the auto-rickshaws two times. Due to the government’s indulgence, the owners and workers are exploiting the passengers.

Meanwhile, the taxicabs, which were introduced in Dhaka in 1998, have already gone extinct as Uber and some ride sharing services have replaced them.

As per the law, BRTA is the legal authority who is also responsible to take care of the services along with its policy-making duty. The record says the BRTA earned Tk 15.89 billion in the last year.

But, the media reports say people do not get services even after the paying taxes and fees. The BRTA is full of brokers and people have to bribe them to get a service.

Ravaged roads

As per roads and highways department’s statistics published in May, 26.32 per cent roads and highways are in very bad shape. The length of the roads is 4,732 kilometres.

Officials at the roads and highways department said the statistics are of dry season. The volume of the ravaged roads has increased in the monsoon.

Formation of road safety sub-committee

After the death of renowned filmmaker Tareque Masud and cinematographer and broadcast journalist Mishuk Munier, the ministry formed a nine-member road safety sub-committee headed by professor Anwar Hossain. The committee submitted a 52-point recommendation to ensure safe roads. The list of recommendations includes implementation of traffic law, raising public awareness, training the drivers, and creating an information hub.

The recommendations also include setting up cameras and police check posts on highways and keeping 1.5 per cent of money of the road projects for safety purposes.

Road safety issues in limbo

In 2015, during a meeting with the National Road Safety Authority, minister Obaidul Quader said the highest speed of vehicle on highways would be fixed at 80 kilometres per hour. Also, a High Court bench ordered the vehicle owners to use speedometer. But, records say, none of the decisions have been executed as yet.

On the other hand, the roads and highways authorities banned auto-rickshaws on the highways in 2015. In 2016, the High Court in another order asked the authorities concerned to remove the locally made three wheelers from 22 highways. None of these decisions has been implemented as of yet.

Asked about the matter, BUET’s civil engineering department professor and Accident Research Institute (ARI) director Moazzem Hossain told Prothom Alo that the government has lack of understanding of the matter and it is indifferent to implementing decisions.

"If not, why Dhaka will be compared with Syria’s Damascus? It is disgraceful," he added.

He also said it is easy to spend money through big projects, because it makes an opportunity for vested quarters to loot money. But providing service is different and it is a tough job.

*This report, originally published in print edition, has been rewritten in English by Toriqul Islam and Shameem Reza