Just the fact that at least 265 people have died and 1,153 have been injured in only 12 days during this year’s Eid holidays is maddening. The high number of casualties only shows, in no uncertain terms, the terrible mismanagement on part of the authorities that has turned our roads, highways, waterways, etc. into death traps. This, of course, is nothing new. Their failure to take lessons from the past, however, which has resulted in this Eid holiday having the highest number of fatalities on highways in the last three years is completely unacceptable.
While roads and highways have been the deadliest in terms of casualties, deaths from accidents on the country’s waterways have not lagged too far behind. Only recently, at least 14 people, including seven women and a child, died after a trawler used to illegally ply different waterways sank in the Sandhya River in Barisal. According to the Barisal Port Officer, the watercraft had neither the licence to carry passengers nor to ply that route. How was the trawler then doing so?
This cannot be allowed to continue. The report which estimated the number of deaths and injuries during the holidays, also found, apart from risky overtaking and reckless driving, the breaching of traffic rules, unskilled drivers, faulty roads, overloading, unfit vehicles and others, to be the major reasons for the accidents.
The authorities should take heed of the solutions suggested in the report. It should also do its own detailed study and come up with a comprehensive strategy that can stop this trend on its tracks. The indifference that is leading to the loss of human life must stop.
