The sudden disappearance of the unfit public transports from the city roads has resulted in untold sufferings to the commuters this week. The city wore almost a desolate look as if a relaxed hartal (strike) was going on.
A special drive -- a much-needed one since long -- to ban unfit vehicles is in progress now in city and elsewhere in the country. In its course, the city streets are turning into a sea of motorised vehicles until afternoon when the special drive ends. However, in the absence of alternative transport arrangements, the city-dwellers, particularly commuters, are now facing enormous difficulties.
Defaulting bus and auto-rickshaw drivers usually take a detour to avoid mobile courts leaving commuters clueless where they would get buses or other transports. After the drive, it becomes a business as usual.
However, some questions have been raised by different quarters over starting such a drive with so much of drum-beating. Why errant bus drivers and owners should know in advance the exact date of starting such drive, such quarters note. Everybody knows for sure that the dilapidated and outdated vehicles would go off the streets in such a situation, leaving the total system in a disarray.
During the drive, a number of passengers were seen hanging like bats from gate-handles of a few buses and minibuses, particularly on the routes usually studded with dilapidated vehicles. Most ramshackle buses and human-haulers were seen parked on the roadside for fear of getting caught.
Taking advantage of limited bus movement, auto-rickshaw and rickshaw drivers charged extra fares from the passengers, especially those who had no option but to reach their offices and destinations at any cost.
The question why those transports, mostly buses and trucks, which received fitness certificates from Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) without following proper rules and regulations, do run on the streets in a very bad condition has also been raised.
Interference by the vested interests, politically connected stakeholders and corrupt officials has thwarted efforts by successive governments to get unfit vehicles brought up to standard or banned, once for all, from the roads.
Despite the stated objective of most successive governments to have unfit vehicles removed, nothing effective has yet been done. Most such vehicle-owners have the upperhand allegedly over the authorities because of political influence and the corruption of a section of influential officials and traffic police.
During the drive, a section of traffic police was reported to have been seen as being engaged in extorting money from transport workers in the name of searching their vehicles in the capital. Such dishonest traffic police personnel were allegedly found to have stopped vehicles, mostly passenger buses and CNG auto-rickshaws in different parts of the capital. But in most cases, they released them in return for speed money.
They were, according to reports in the media, seen realising Tk 1000 to Tk 3000 from each vehicle, along with a threat to fine the drivers and send their vehicles to dumping ground.
There are 30 types of technical and physical tests that vehicles are supposed to pass to be fitness-certified, but few vehicles undergo such tests.
A recent World Bank (WB) study on urban bus operations in Dhaka found that the public transportation sector was rife with inconsistent practices and uneven enforcement.
Past efforts to otherwise regulate and reform bus operations, as the report said, have been thwarted by the efforts of business 'syndicates', politicians, police and trade unions, allowing unsafe, polluting buses to operate on the capital city's already choked roads.
According to the WB study, most buses in Dhaka are more than 20 years old, emit black smoke, are badly dented, are vulnerable to accidents due to faulty brakes, lack signal lights and rear-view mirrors and use illegal hydraulic horns.
Traffic congestion, the report observed, discouraged owners from introducing new buses because of the reduced daily passenger load that buses can carry. Police reportedly demanded bribes in the process of checking licences and fitness documents, and also to avoid requisitioning of vehicles for police duty.
To cope with this system, bus companies often make routine monthly payments to every police box and police station officer along their routes, the study said. Yet such payments do not reach street-level police, who respond by stopping buses arbitrarily, thereby creating chaos and unpredictability to their corrupt transactions, it added.
The Road Transport Committee (RTC), it was further noted in the report under mention, collects bribes for route permits, and bargains to raise the bribe price. The BRTA officials and staff, it said, take bribes for issuing driving licences, blue books, registration numbers, and fitness certificates, and to provide timely service.
A portion of the funds collected goes to senior BRTA management, and to political and transport association leaders. In addition to such examples where bus owners, drivers and staff are the victims of corruption, the relevant operators also engage themselves in pro-active corrupt practices.
Political organisations also take their own slices. Owners' associations and trade unions collect not only annual membership fees, but also daily fees at key checkpoints. A portion is allocated to party leaders, and most of the rest, to leaders of the associations and unions.
Influential party leaders do allegedly dominate the bus owners' associations, and have a key role in route allocations for all types of vehicles - whether fit or unfit. These are, in turn, given without consideration to traffic congestion, in order to accommodate powerful clients, and to maximise revenues from formal and informal fees, according to the study.
On their respective part, government officials, police and bus owners, as mentioned in the WB report, did otherwise deny such allegations and defend themselves.
There are currently around one million buses, mini-buses and trucks plying around the country, of which 300,000 are unfit. The BRTA has issued around 1.43 million licences. However, there is no statistics on unlicensed drivers.
Until such special drives are carried out without letting others know about its timing, hardly anything substantial is likely to be gained, now or in the future. Then again, the entire sector needs to be freed from undue political influence and corrupt practices.
szkhan@dhaka.net