When a fake driving license holder driving an unfit bus carrying 50 passenger on board, you can imagine how risky the life of the passengers including the driver! Every year around 5000 people die and similar numbers of people get injured in road accidents in Bangladesh. The number of people who die in road accidents is almost similar to the fatalities in a full scale war!
Poor management and transport gangs control the whole transport sector in the country. According to World Bank ‘Bangladesh’s network of 3,900 kilometers of inland waterways
are the only mode of transport for 12 percent of country’s rural communities. Carrying about 194 million tons of cargo and roughly 25 percent of all of Bangladesh’s passenger traffic each year, inland waterway transport is less expensive for the poor and essential for trade among the country’s biggest cites and with neighboring India and Bhutan. Moreover, better inland waterways can help Bangladesh reduce road traffic and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
A report published in the daily star said ‘In the 1990s, there were around 11,000 buses in Dhaka, while around 70 lakh people lived in the city. Currently, around 1.5 crore people live in the capital, but the number of buses has come down to around 4,000. The daily also claimed that around 90 percent of public transport, including buses, minibuses, CNG-run auto-rickshaws, and cabs are unfit. Besides, around 50 percent drivers operate public vehicles with fake driving licenses.
As the economy changes, Bangladesh people are using transport more than ever. With poor funding, poor management and lack of will and attention, Bangladesh does not have enough resources to check vehicle safety and training drivers and recruiting transport police, even the lane mark, speed limit, road lights, hardly visible.
Road accidents have taken many lives including former finance minister M. Saifur Rahman. Activities like actor Iliyas Kahchan fighting for ‘Nirapad Sarak Chai’ means we want safe road, he has been fighting for road safety for the last 27 years , since his wife died in a road accident.
But merely a very slow or no improvement noticeable in Bangladesh for road safety.