Spl permission for driving public transports still neglected

Public transport owners and drivers do not bother about the mandatory public service vehicle permission for running buses and minibuses and the authorities also go lax in implementing it.

Road safety experts said that lack of monitoring and enforcement on the violation of this permission increases the risks of fatal accidents and creates a culture of impunity.

Public service vehicle permission is given to the drivers of buses and minibuses for carrying passengers commercially after checking their experience, competency and behaviour, said officials of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority.

The authority chairman Kamrul Ahsan told New Age on Wednesday that they monitored the documents of public transport drivers with their executive magistrates under regular mobile courts and highway police. ‘We don’t have any special monitoring system for them,’ he added.

The authority has eight executive magistrates in Dhaka city and two for the Chattogram city to check thousands of buses and minibuses.

Till December 18 this year, the transport authority issued 10,603 public service vehicle permits.

The number of permits was 10,154 till December 2017 indicating that only 449 permissions were granted in the past two years.

The number of registered buses and minibuses with BRTA was 78,518 till November this year.

On the contrary, Bangladesh Road Transport Owners’ Association leaders said that around 88,000 buses and minibuses were running on long and short routes across the country.

Former director of the Accident Research Institute Md Shamsul Hoque, also a professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, told New Age on Friday that public transport drivers put the lives of passengers at risk always. ‘The drivers or the owners or the authorities cannot be reluctant in getting or distributing these approvals but in cases of public service. To ensure the security of people, this approval should get highest priority which is totally absent in our system,’ he alleged.

Shamsul also said that the authorities casually give the permission without appropriate evaluation which led to the current situation.

‘If you compromise while giving approvals, it means that you cannot give security to the lives of passengers by giving public transports on the hands of unskilled and inexperienced drivers,’ he said.

A commercial mass transit authority and implementation of related systems are necessary to appoint skilled drivers on public transports, he added. 

Transport expert and former executive director of the then Dhaka Transport Coordination Board, SM Salehuddin, said that the gap between the numbers of drivers of public transports and public service vehicle permission should be reduced.

He suggested the authorities to provide training to these drivers at Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation and private training institutes immediately.

‘This is illegal to drive public transports with the drivers without proper permission,’ he said, adding, ‘Unless the law will not be implemented.’ 

Abul Kalam, vice-president of Bangladesh Road Transport Owners’ Association told New Age that the drivers did not apply for this approval as the authority stopped giving the permission. 

Bangladesh Road Transport Authority director for engineering Md Lokman Hossain Mollah said that the drivers of public transports apply for the special permits and their experience, competency and behaviour were checked. ‘Whenever we get such applications, we give them permission,’ he said.

The definition of public transports in the new Road Transport Act 2018 is – any motor vehicle used for or suitable to use for carrying passengers in exchange of money.

The law’s section 5 (1) says that no person can drive public transport or can give permission to drive public transport without approval paper from the authorities. 

The section 5(2) says that driving of public transports, approval for driving public transports and other relevant issues will be fixed by the rules.

The rules are yet to be finalised.

If anyone drives public transport without licence then the offender will face maximum six months imprisonment or maximum Tk 25,000 fines or both, the new law says.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net