In a city where people have to be forced, often with punishment, to make them use foot over-bridges, the escalator bridge in Banani is one of the rarest, if not the only one that people use voluntarily.
The reason behind its popularity is of course the escalator that takes out the effort of climbing the stairs.
That makes it the least likely of places in the city for police to conduct a campaign for raising awareness about the benefits of using and the risks of not using the bridges.
Yesterday, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) began a two-day awareness raising campaign at the foot of the bridge located in front of the Shainik Club.
Interestingly, there was hardly any activity from DMP that could qualify as public relations. Neither did the police officials talk to any pedestrian, nor was there any poster or any other distributable item such as leaflets.
Requesting anonymity, one of the pedestrians, who was using the over-bridge, termed the campaign as “strange.” He said he did not see any point of conducting such a campaign in front of an over-bridge which people use voluntarily.
“There are many such over-bridges in the city that people do not use at all. I do not know why they selected this one,” he said.
A number of reporters from different newspapers, television channels and online news portals were invited to the programme.
DMP did not even write a press release; the reporters were all called via mobile phone text messages.
This Dhaka Tribune reporter later found that the so-called campaign comprised just a press briefing that looked like any other routine briefing, in which DMP Commissioner Benazir Ahmed, some other police high-ups and film star and road safety campaigner Ilias Kanchan said a few words.
Asked where was the campaign, DMP Assistant Commissioner (media) Saidur Rahman said: “The campaign is to let media know about the campaign. The media will publish the news and people will read about it and get aware.”
Asked why the Banani bridge was chosen, Saidur said: “It was randomly selected. The selection did not involve any plan… This is just an experimental campaign. We have plans to take some more of these in future.”
Civil society member Abul Maksud was present at the programme. When asked why he was there, he said he went there as a conscious citizen.
Asked why this particular bridge was chosen, Maksud said: “I do not have any idea why this bridge was chosen. They could have chosen one of the over bridges in Karwan Bazaar.”
At the briefing, DMP boss Benazir said strict actions would be taken from now on against those who do not use the foot over-bridges.
Actor Ilias Kanchan said: “Around 49% pedestrians are killed in road accidents every year. More awareness is needed in order to reduce the rate of accidents.”
Source: Dhaka Tribune
