Tasmiah Nuhiya Ahmed, Executive Editor, The New York Times, Bangladesh National Section:
Bangladesh Passengers’ Welfare Association (BPWA) estimated that a total of 200 people were killed and 754 others injured in accidents on roads, waterways and railways across the country during the Eid ul Fitr holidays in 2018. The number of casualties came from 127 incidents of accidents that took place from July 1 to July 12 of 2018. Following this on 26 July 2018, the Road Transport and Bridges Minister of Bangladesh issued directives to the officials concerned to ensure smooth vehicular movement on roads during the Eid-ul-Azha holidays. Despite issuing these directives, in the past week during Eid-ul Azha, nearly 100 people died and scores injured in numerous road accidents on different roads and highways around the country. And since the beginning of this year, several hundreds of people were killed in road crashes.
The government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in August 2015 had banned three-wheelers and other slow moving vehicles on the highways in order to avoid fatal road accidents across the country. However, the ban has not been executed in effect. It has been alleged that the ban was not effective due to lack of monitoring by the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and the highway police.
As a result most of the road accidents over the past few years have seen involvement of three-wheelers or other slow moving vehicles on highways. A committee headed by Mr. Abdul Malek, Additional Secretary, Road Transport and Highways Division; was formed to formulate the necessary rules to ban the plying of these vehicles on highways. And now the government officials are expecting that the ban will be strictly enforced from now.
However, while we appreciate these efforts, it is also important to understand that we don’t want to see these kinds of initiatives being taken after we lose precious lives of our people in accidents. We would like to see precautionary measures being taken effectively for preventing these kinds of accidents to take place.
On 26 December 2014, a four year old boy, Zihad fell into a 16 inch wide shaft adjacent to the Shahjahanpur Railway Colony playground, which was left uncovered by the respondents and ran several hundred feet deep. Following this incident, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed before the High Court Division under Article 102 of the Constitution seeking directions pertaining to the concerned authorities and claiming compensation of Tk. 30 lakh for their gross negligence, payable to Zihad’s parents. On 5 August 2018, the Appellate Division upheld a High Court verdict that ordered Bangladesh Railway and Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence to pay Tk 10 lakh each as compensation to the parents of Zihad. This case is immensely significant because this is the first time in Bangladesh, the judiciary is holding public authority bodies liable for their employees’ negligence (be it a negligent act or negligent omission) by way of constitutional torts and strict liability.
These kind of negligent acts on the part of public officials are to be addressed more from now if we really want to stop these kinds of accidents to take place. Mere blaming does not help. We need to take proper actions for making them understand that being negligent can never be an excuse when it costs life.