Are bus drivers beyond the law in Bangladesh?
Pratiti Shirin writes for DOT :
It happens again and again. People are hit again and again by a frantically running bus killing and destroying a life in the second of an instance. The latest of these victims is Abrar Ahmed Chowdhury who was killed by a bus on Tuesday in the Bashundhara region of Dhaka city.
A few months ago, Dhaka city was brought virtually to a standstill after students landed on the road, taking over the role of the police, checking licenses after searching each and every vehicle for proper papers and sending off the ones which fell short of the required criteria out of roads. This action was carried out unanimously by students after two college students were rolled over on the Uttara highway. The students at that time demanded certain points which the government guaranteed would be met. A few months later, other people have been killed until now but the road situation remains the same as before. Still now, unlicensed and fitness less vehicles rule the road: the one crushing Abrar had a licence for driving light vehicles; not one for driving a heavy vehicle like a bus. Whereas the promise of the construction of a foot over bridge was made immediately following Abrar’s death, what good was that promise really to Abrar’s parents who had lost their son?
Even while the news of protests of Abrar’s death all over the city still has not faded out, we get new news as I am writing this article how other students have been killed outside Dhaka and a father and son in a motorbike accident involving buses. One inevitably asks: what gives these out-of-order vehicles the license to operate on the road for years giving them a potentially time bomb status? Why can’t the BRTA do absolutely nothing to stop these monsters from running on the road? What gives the owners of these buses and trucks unlimited power? Are they beyond the law? Why can’t the penalty for running over people be extended to death or life imprisonment? Why is it so difficult to change the law of a maximum of 5 years of jail that drivers receive currently under the Road Transport Act 2018 to capital punishment? What prevents the government to take stern measures against these perpetrators?
According to the annual report published by Bangladesh Passengers Welfare Association, at least 7,221 people were killed in road accidents in 2018. While the number of casualties is lower than 2017 in which 7,397 people were reported to have been killed, the number is not low enough and laws must be passed and implemented from above to control this phenomenon of senseless killings which sporadically take away lives. A statistics is not just a statistics. Each of these 7000 people was someone’s child, husband, wife, or a beloved brother or sister. They were us and will continue to be us unless real action is taken to stop these absurd and untimely deaths.
The writer is an Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She can be reached at pratshirin85@du.ac.bd.