In this era of pervasive pretence and degeneration of morals in our milieu, when the truth is miserably in short supply, someone calling a spade a spade should be regarded as a brave person. While none of his cabinet colleagues made a clean breast of his mistake, an admirable example has been set by Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader on 19 September 2016 when he accepted responsibility for the deaths in road crashes on highways during the holidays of Eid-ul-Azha. But these preventable mishaps and deaths did not happen owing to Mr. Quader’s fault per se.
He told journalists at a meet-the-press programme in Dhaka, “I am not successful in establishing discipline in transport sector and as a minister I can’t shirk responsibility of the accidents on highways”. The minister said that he was shocked at such “procession of death” on the highways.
At least 265 people were killed and 1,153 others injured in 210 accidents on roads, waterways and railways across the country in 12 days from September 7 to 18 during their Eid-ul-Azha journeys this year. Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity (JKS), a passengers’ welfare association, came up with the statistics. The association found over-speed, reckless driving, risky overtaking, absence of road dividers, defying traffic rules, driving by unskilled drivers, dilapidated roads, passengers lack of awareness, overloading, lack of separate lanes for slow vehicles, unfit vehicles and attending phone calls by drivers while driving as the major reasons behind the accidents.
These accidents, the minister alleged, were mostly caused by drivers who drive their vehicles at an excessively higher speed to avail as many trips as they can. General people can be made to abide by the traffic rules “but it is very tough to bring the politicians and influential people under the ambit of law,” the minister added. Dividers and service roads will be constructed on the Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Mymenshingh highways in order to reduce road accidents, Quader said.
We hope the minister will be able to devise an effective plan and modus operandi to make highways safe and deal with road hogs severely.
When all said and done, first and foremost Mr. Obaidul Quader’s singular target should be to discipline automobile drivers many of whom do not possess genuine driving license. So be it.
But here it is quite relevant to recall that a shipping minister’s job is to look after national waterways where hundreds of people perished in maritime disasters. Shipping minister Shahjahan Khan has often been busy with sundry other extraneous irrelevant assignments like threatening to stop supply of food to Opposition BNP chief Khaleda’s office and urging Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to immediately arrest the BNP Chairperson in 2015.
Some years ago Shahjahan Khan was reported to have applied pressure on the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority to get 10 thousand driving licenses WITHOUT mandatory driving test! After that too Khan was reported to have demanded 24,000 thousand more driving licenses without test, ignoring the very fact that every holder of such license could be a potential killer.
Therefore, the task will be easier said than done because there is major stumbling block.
Source: Weekly Holiday
