Police turn city road into dumping ground

Police have been using a portion of the road stretch from Begum Rokeya Sarani to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics office at Agargaon for dumping seized vehicles for years.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police said as they had no other place anywhere under their two traffic divisions to dump the vehicles they seized from time to time, they were using the northern portion of the road as dumping ground.
Local ward councillor Forkan Hossain said the police had no right to block the road by dumping vehicles and disrupting traffic in and around the important area, where offices of several multilateral and government agencies were located.
Wondering how the law enforcement agency itself could break the law, he requested the authorities to free the road as early as possible.
The councillor said the police had grabbed the road as none had raised any questions over the matter. ‘The locals as well as commuters are suffering a lot here due to the dumping of the vehicles blocking the road. The administrative area is also losing its beauty,’ Forkan said.
Deputy commissioner of DMP (traffic) Imtiaz Ahmed said, ‘We feel embarrassed for this, but we found no other place to dump these vehicles.’
‘We have asked the authorities for designating a site where we can keep the seized vehicles,’ he said.
The Public Works Department built the 150 feet wide road in Agargaon administrative belt with a view to reducing traffic jam in the area in 2007 and asked the city corporation to maintain it, a PWD source said.
Last week, New Age found several hundred vehicles dumped on the road blocking its northern portion.
Over the last three years the police, mostly the traffic police of Dhaka north and west division which include at least eight police stations of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, have been dumping seized vehicles on the road, DMP police said.
The seized vehicles include CNG auto-rickshaws, human howlers, buses, trucks, cars and others.
‘Average 100 vehicles are coming here every day,’ said the DC of traffic police.
The vehicles, seized for various reasons including road accident, traffic rule violation, unfitness, use in criminal activities and the others, were seen decaying under the open sky.
‘Different parts of the vehicles are being stolen every day,’ said an owner of some vehicles dumped there.
Though DMP policemen in three shifts are deployed there to ensure security of the vehicles, locals have alleged that the policemen themselves are involved in stealing parts and selling them in black markets.
PWD chief engineer Md Hafizur Rahman Munshi said the police illegally grabbed the road without bothering to take permission of the PWD.
‘We have recently asked the police for freeing the road immediately, but we got no answer as yet,’ he told New Age.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net