Punish the real culprits for launch disasters
Saturday, 12 December 2009
A passenger launch sank killing many passengers. This is nothing new except that this has once again hurt many families directly. And what does our minister in charge of water transport say? He wants to hang (read prosecute) the former prime minister's sons because the launch belonged to them. Is that going to solve the problem of defectively designed boats and continued overloading?
What good is the minister if he has no sense of priority unless that priority is been dictated to him by some other who has an even lesser sense of priority?
The time has come to check each and every of these passenger-carrying vessels and certify if they comply with building rules. Next, the absolutely normal practice of overloading these vessels must be stopped immediately.
Was this the only boat that was defective and overloaded? No!
So dear minister, please weigh the situation in your own good time and you will see that it is imperative to halt the anarchy in the water transport business before you go political head hunting. In any case, Khaleda's sons or their partners were not at the wheel when this accident took place. Technically at least the blame should fall on the person or persons running the vessel.
There has to be a thorough investigation and then the guilty parties should be punished but if those people who are being hounded for the accident manage to prove that most passenger vessels now plying our waters have been built with the similar defective design, then what are we going to do? Or, rather, what is the law going to decide?
Abul Barek
Thateri Bazar
Dhaka
What good is the minister if he has no sense of priority unless that priority is been dictated to him by some other who has an even lesser sense of priority?
The time has come to check each and every of these passenger-carrying vessels and certify if they comply with building rules. Next, the absolutely normal practice of overloading these vessels must be stopped immediately.
Was this the only boat that was defective and overloaded? No!
So dear minister, please weigh the situation in your own good time and you will see that it is imperative to halt the anarchy in the water transport business before you go political head hunting. In any case, Khaleda's sons or their partners were not at the wheel when this accident took place. Technically at least the blame should fall on the person or persons running the vessel.
There has to be a thorough investigation and then the guilty parties should be punished but if those people who are being hounded for the accident manage to prove that most passenger vessels now plying our waters have been built with the similar defective design, then what are we going to do? Or, rather, what is the law going to decide?
Abul Barek
Thateri Bazar
Dhaka