Transports back on streets across Bangladesh defying ban
The presence of transports is increasing on roads across Bangladesh by the day defying the stay-at-home instruction of the government during the ongoing public holiday for containing the COVID-19 outbreak.
Even, as per a report, at least 211 people were killed and 227 injured in 201 road accidents in April.
Currently, almost all types of road transports, including CNG-run auto rickshaws, human haulers, illegal vehicles like easy bikes, nasimon and karimon, are crowding the capital’s streets as elsewhere in the country defying the ban on plying during the general holiday.
Mismanagement in ensuring the shutdown, lack of coordination among the authorities and enforcement agencies and people’s tendency towards not following laws have been blamed for the situation.
Supreme Court advocate and Road Safety Foundation vice-president Jyotirmoy Barua blamed that there had been mismanagement in the total system of the government and lack of coordination among the government agencies in dealing with the prevailing coronavirus situation.
As a result, the movement of road transports without coming to a stop has created a haphazard situation on roads, he observed.
He further said that if the markets and shops reopened then it should be considered as to how people would go there.
The government has banned the movement of all road transports since March 26 when the public holiday began to ensure social distancing in order to arrest the coronavirus spread.
The authorities have so far put at least 46 districts under total lockdown and 15 others under partial lockdown as the novel coronavirus has spread across 63 of the country’s 64 districts, barring only Rangamati.
Initially, the movement of all road transports came to halt.
But in the first week of April hundreds of thousands of garment workers from different parts of the country used local transports, ferries and even made long walks to get back to their places of job in Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj as their owners were set to resume productions at factories from April 5.
Later the owners backtracked on the decision and on April 5 the Dhaka Metropolitan Police said that they would restrict the entry to and exist from the capital which was being barely followed.
Again, since April 26, garment manufacturers have been reopening their factories, said to be on a limited scale, ignoring the opposition from health experts and the workers have been returning from villages to join their work.
At present market places, city streets, alleyways and highways are experiencing a surge in road transports.
Passenger Welfare Association of Bangladesh on Monday in a report showed that in the just past April 97 fatal road accidents involved trucks and covered vans, 63 involved motorcycles, 29 involved battery-run rickshaws and easy bikes, 28 involved Nasimons and Karimons, 22 involved CNG-run auto rickshaws, 17 involved cars and one such accident involved a bus.
Additional inspector general for highway police Mahbubur Rahman on Monday told New Age that some goods-laden vehicles were carrying passengers by avoiding highways and vehicles like nasimons and karimons were running on feeder and local roads.
One of the reasons behind the fatal accidents in April was reckless driving while people should follow laws for their own safety, he added.
Bangladesh Road Transport Authority chairman Md Yousub Ali Mollah said the same day that they were yet to get any instruction to lift the ban on public transports.
Earlier they had sent letter to the district administration, the district and highway police to take action against the vehicles running on roads defying the ban, he added.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
