18.7 lakh driving licences against 35 lakh vehicles: minister

There are only 18.7 lakh people with valid driving licences for driving nearly 35 lakh registered vehicles, road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader told parliament on Tuesday.
‘As per the statistic as of June 30, 2018, there are about 34 lakh 98 thousand and 620 registered vehicles and of those 22 lakh 6 thousand and 155 are motorcycles. Against the total vehicles, there are 18 lakh 69 thousand and 819 persons have valid licences,’ Quader said while responding to a question of M Abdul Latif.
The minister said as there has been a lack of driving schools and instructors, the country does not have the required number of skilled drivers.
Responding to a supplementary question, the minister termed the recent report of the Jatrikalyan Samity a fake one.
The samity in its report mentioned that some 339 people were killed in road accidents during the last Eid rush.
‘The police and newspaper reports showed that only 82 people were killed during the Eid holidays but that organisation put a figure of 339 people. It is an imaginary report,’ he said. 
The ever widening vehicle-driver ratio reveals an anarchy and mismanagement in the country’s road transport sector. 
According to BRTA in December 2016, there were 27.9 lakh registered vehicles in the country while the number of driving licences was 18 lakh.
According to this statistics, at present the number of driving licence holders has dropped nearly 15.8 per cent since December 2016.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net