Abul Hossain for making highways into four-lane ones for safety
Friday, 27 November 2009
Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain Thursday said, all highways in the country should be made into four-lane ones as the first and foremost requisite to ensure road safety to avert high rate of road accidents with about 3,500 causalities every year, reports BSS.
"We should give utmost importance to making the highways into four-lane ones with dividers, and if necessary, invite private sector for the task if donor community becomes reluctant to provide fund", the minister said at Zia International Airport after returning from First UN Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow.
"So far, not a single highway in our country covers the international standard of road safety," Abul Hossain said adding Dhaka-Chittagong national highway, after making it into a four-lane one, was expected to be first of its kind.
According to the Roads and Highways Department (R&H), which is responsible for the management of the National, Regional and Zila road network, the country has about 21,000 kilometres highway network, out of which about 3,500 kilometres are national highways.
"My experience from the conference is that we did not give due attention to the matter in the past and it might be either due to negligence of the previous governments or fund shortage", the minister, who led a four-member Bangladesh team in the two-day conference from November 19-20, said.
The Road Safety Conference was arranged in line with the last UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution for providing the governments, especially low- and middle-income countries with guidance on good practice to support action tackling road safety risk factors.
The UNGA resolution came in the backdrop of a WHO/World Bank report that road traffic injuries emerged as a major public health problem across the world, which caused death of more than 1.2 million people and injury of as many as 50 million a year.
The Moscow declaration urged the UNGA to announce the decade 2011-2020 as the "Decade of Action for Road Safety" with a goal to stabilise and then reduce the forecast level of global road deaths by 2020, he said.
"We should give utmost importance to making the highways into four-lane ones with dividers, and if necessary, invite private sector for the task if donor community becomes reluctant to provide fund", the minister said at Zia International Airport after returning from First UN Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow.
"So far, not a single highway in our country covers the international standard of road safety," Abul Hossain said adding Dhaka-Chittagong national highway, after making it into a four-lane one, was expected to be first of its kind.
According to the Roads and Highways Department (R&H), which is responsible for the management of the National, Regional and Zila road network, the country has about 21,000 kilometres highway network, out of which about 3,500 kilometres are national highways.
"My experience from the conference is that we did not give due attention to the matter in the past and it might be either due to negligence of the previous governments or fund shortage", the minister, who led a four-member Bangladesh team in the two-day conference from November 19-20, said.
The Road Safety Conference was arranged in line with the last UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution for providing the governments, especially low- and middle-income countries with guidance on good practice to support action tackling road safety risk factors.
The UNGA resolution came in the backdrop of a WHO/World Bank report that road traffic injuries emerged as a major public health problem across the world, which caused death of more than 1.2 million people and injury of as many as 50 million a year.
The Moscow declaration urged the UNGA to announce the decade 2011-2020 as the "Decade of Action for Road Safety" with a goal to stabilise and then reduce the forecast level of global road deaths by 2020, he said.