Unskilled, unlicensed drivers prowl roads

Many efforts to improve drivers’ skills and regulate unlicensed ones have failed over the years, resulting in a high number of road accidents that kill scores of people every year. The law was amended, different committees were formed, and drivers were granted different waivers, but none of these measures proved effective. On April 19, a Raida Paribahan bus rammed a motorcycle and veered through parts of the fence at a construction site near Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, killing an engineer of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh. The primary investigation of the Rapid Action Battalion found that the bus driver did not have a licence to drive the bus. On April 17, a truck hit several vehicles at a toll booth in Jhalakathi, killing at least 14 people. The driver of the car was later found to have no licence to drive a heavy vehicle. He took the steering wheel of the truck, a heavy vehicle, despite his licence permitting him to drive light-category vehicles like cars. As per the Road Transport Act, 2018, if a driver with a licence from a fixed category drives a vehicle from another category, it is a punishable offence. Md Shahabuddin Khan, additional inspector general of highway police, said that, as per their primary investigation, this driver was not a regular driver who was only giving a proxy for another driver. Drivers without skills, with no or proper driving licences, and with reckless attitudes are defying laws, making Bangladeshi roads chaotic, which results in frequent fatal road crashes. While they still lack the basics, transport workers’ leaders have allegedly paid no attention to it and are mostly active in reducing their punishment in the event of an accident. Following frequent fatal accidents, prime minister Sheikh Hasina, on June 25, 2018, gave directives to ensure drivers rest every five hours, alternative drivers for long-distance transports, and training for drivers and their assistants. Under a project of the Roads and Highways Department, the initiative was taken to build four resting facilities for the drivers at Cumilla, Sirajganj, Magura, and Habiganj between August 2021 and December 2024. Project director KM Nur-e-Alam claimed that they have completed 80 per cent of the work on the project already. Directives for alternation of drivers, rest every five hours, and training for drivers and their assistants remained largely unfulfilled. Currently, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority is giving only two-day training to professional drivers. A five-year-long Road Safety Project taken last year has a component for four months of training for 60,000 new commercial drivers, but the implementation of the project has yet to start. According to the BRTA, at present, there are around 71.61 lakh driving licenses—40.11 lakh professional and 31.5 lakh non-professional—against a total of 59.98 lakh registered motor vehicles. The BRTA from time to time relaxed the rules for the drivers to move from one category to another, but it did not bring the desired outcome. In 2019, transport owners took the initiative to train professional drivers with medium and heavy licences under their own facilities to be built on 10-acre government land at Purbachal. There is still no progress on it. A committee headed by former shipping minister Shajahan Khan, also president of the Bangladesh Road Transport Workers’ Federation, in 2019 placed 111 recommendations to restore order on roads and curb accidents, but they also remained largely implemented. Workers’ Federation general secretary Osman Ali acknowledged that training for the drivers was very insufficient. He accused BRTA of going slow in issuing and updating driving licences. BRTA chairman Nur Mohammad Mazumder said that even after having licences, the drivers were defying traffic laws. ‘If the people on the roads do not follow laws, it will be very difficult to reduce the number of road crashes,’ he said. In the face of pressure from transport workers and owners, the cabinet in March this year approved a draft amendment to the Road Transport Act, 2018, five and a half years after its enactment, reducing the punishments and penalties mostly for drivers and their assistants. The amendment, however, is yet to be approved in parliament. ‘Reckless driving on roads continued due to the absence of accountability, a lack of monitoring from the authorities concerned, and the non-implementation of laws,’ Safe Roads and Transport Alliance convener Hossain Zillur Rahman. He said that the police, the transport owners, and the authorities should check on the drivers to see if they were allowed to drive a particular vehicle. Accident Research Institute director under the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Professor Md Shamsul Hoque, said that in Bangladesh, the government’s initiatives for improving road safety are infrastructure-development biassed. ‘We only develop infrastructure but pay no attention to road safety,’ he said.  ‘We have built an access-controlled highway on the Dhaka-Mawa road, but accidents are frequent there too due to little regard for safety issues.’ Police said improving the drivers’ was imperative as they could not check licences always. Out of around 22,000 kilometres of highways and roads under RHD, police cover around 3,000km, said Shahabuddin Khan, additional inspector general of highway police.
Published on: 2024-04-25 20:28:27.905497 +0200 CEST