Stunts are no substitutes for real accomplishments
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Enayet Rasul Bhuiyan
THE traffic authorities declared in advance that they would start seizing buses, minibuses, pick-ups and the likes which would be found to be over 20-25 years old and also the ones without fitness certificates in Dhaka city from 15 July. According to available figures, the number of such old vehicles are some 13,000. The total number of such and other vehicles operating without fitness certificates is some 80,000, according to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
The rationale for the drive could be several. First of all, the old vehicles and vehicles without fitness certificates form a big number. If all of them or most of them could be taken off the roads on grounds of being age barred or for not carrying fitness certificates, then there would be a number of dividends. The disappearance of a large number of vehicles would lead to decongestion of the traffic mess, relieving the tormented commuters in the city. Secondly, the attempt to seize vehicles for not carrying fitness certificates would lead to a last-minute scramble among their operators to renew their fitness certificates paying all current as well as arrear dues. Thus, there would result a one-time surge of revenues for the government from this source. So far, the operators could manage to operate without fitness certificates by allegedly paying bribes to traffic policemen now and then. The government lost revenues in the process and corruption thrived. Finally, the successful completion of the drive would create discipline and awareness. Operators or owners of such vehicles would realise their responsibility to pay their dues to the government and work within the limitations of traffic rules and regulations.
But, all of the expected results from the drive are in theory only. Little or nothing has been achieved and there would not be much changes either as long as it continues in its present manner. One piece of statistics should suffice. Only 11 buses and minibuses have been seized during the first three days of the drive. This is peanuts compared to the total number of offending vehicles around.
It appears that the prior knowledge of the date of the start of the drive served as a warning to ooperators of the target vehicles and they responded by staying away from roads to avoid being challenged. But according to newspaper reports, they tried to make up for this immobility by driving their vehicles in the night time when the check posts of the mobile courts ceased to function. Thus, there has been hardly any outcome from this drive. It may continue for some more days with similar marginal results. Once the drive is called off, the hordes of the offending vehicles would one again come back to the roads in full force round the clock to make up for lost time. It would again be business as usual.
The mobile courts involved in the drive includes magistrates and personnel from the BRTA. But for all practical purposes, the traffic policemen are the team leaders. They cannot have any genuine motivation to go after those who have been like cash cows for them over the years. The only impact -- and a negative one at that -- seems to be some inconveniences caused to users of the services of the offending vehicles. These vehicles used to meet the transport needs of a large number of commuters in the city cheaply. The non-operation of these buses and mini buses in great number in the day time to avoid the drive, therefore, is creating transportation related difficulties for these people. But media reports showed that despite the somewhat thinner number of buses and mini buses on the roads as a sequel to the drive, the same has had hardly any impact on easing traffic congestion. The tailbacks continue to be as long and as exasperating as ever in most places of the city.
So, from the above, it should be clear that the drive to free the roads from unfit vehicles, is turning out to be a flop like other measures pursued recently to ease traffic jams. Last year, traffic police authorities vowed to ease traffic jams with full use of automatic signalling devices and demarcating paths for different categories of vehicles. But the signalling lights are found to be inoperative in many places of the city. Even where these are operative, the same are not being used and traffic policemen are found doing the signalling with their hands like in the past and doing a very sloppy job of it by holding up traffic movement for irrationally too long. As for the demarcation paths, nobody sees any sign anywhere that the traffic police really want to enforce the use of such paths. Thus, the declared measures were perhaps nothing better intentioned or were only sick jokes played on the people by the traffic authorities.
People are indeed becoming very spiteful about such on-and-off futile experiments imposed on them by police or traffic authorities. If the politicians in power had their ears to the ground, they would not have failed to hear the growingly loud embittered murmurs of the suffering people on these scores.
THE traffic authorities declared in advance that they would start seizing buses, minibuses, pick-ups and the likes which would be found to be over 20-25 years old and also the ones without fitness certificates in Dhaka city from 15 July. According to available figures, the number of such old vehicles are some 13,000. The total number of such and other vehicles operating without fitness certificates is some 80,000, according to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
The rationale for the drive could be several. First of all, the old vehicles and vehicles without fitness certificates form a big number. If all of them or most of them could be taken off the roads on grounds of being age barred or for not carrying fitness certificates, then there would be a number of dividends. The disappearance of a large number of vehicles would lead to decongestion of the traffic mess, relieving the tormented commuters in the city. Secondly, the attempt to seize vehicles for not carrying fitness certificates would lead to a last-minute scramble among their operators to renew their fitness certificates paying all current as well as arrear dues. Thus, there would result a one-time surge of revenues for the government from this source. So far, the operators could manage to operate without fitness certificates by allegedly paying bribes to traffic policemen now and then. The government lost revenues in the process and corruption thrived. Finally, the successful completion of the drive would create discipline and awareness. Operators or owners of such vehicles would realise their responsibility to pay their dues to the government and work within the limitations of traffic rules and regulations.
But, all of the expected results from the drive are in theory only. Little or nothing has been achieved and there would not be much changes either as long as it continues in its present manner. One piece of statistics should suffice. Only 11 buses and minibuses have been seized during the first three days of the drive. This is peanuts compared to the total number of offending vehicles around.
It appears that the prior knowledge of the date of the start of the drive served as a warning to ooperators of the target vehicles and they responded by staying away from roads to avoid being challenged. But according to newspaper reports, they tried to make up for this immobility by driving their vehicles in the night time when the check posts of the mobile courts ceased to function. Thus, there has been hardly any outcome from this drive. It may continue for some more days with similar marginal results. Once the drive is called off, the hordes of the offending vehicles would one again come back to the roads in full force round the clock to make up for lost time. It would again be business as usual.
The mobile courts involved in the drive includes magistrates and personnel from the BRTA. But for all practical purposes, the traffic policemen are the team leaders. They cannot have any genuine motivation to go after those who have been like cash cows for them over the years. The only impact -- and a negative one at that -- seems to be some inconveniences caused to users of the services of the offending vehicles. These vehicles used to meet the transport needs of a large number of commuters in the city cheaply. The non-operation of these buses and mini buses in great number in the day time to avoid the drive, therefore, is creating transportation related difficulties for these people. But media reports showed that despite the somewhat thinner number of buses and mini buses on the roads as a sequel to the drive, the same has had hardly any impact on easing traffic congestion. The tailbacks continue to be as long and as exasperating as ever in most places of the city.
So, from the above, it should be clear that the drive to free the roads from unfit vehicles, is turning out to be a flop like other measures pursued recently to ease traffic jams. Last year, traffic police authorities vowed to ease traffic jams with full use of automatic signalling devices and demarcating paths for different categories of vehicles. But the signalling lights are found to be inoperative in many places of the city. Even where these are operative, the same are not being used and traffic policemen are found doing the signalling with their hands like in the past and doing a very sloppy job of it by holding up traffic movement for irrationally too long. As for the demarcation paths, nobody sees any sign anywhere that the traffic police really want to enforce the use of such paths. Thus, the declared measures were perhaps nothing better intentioned or were only sick jokes played on the people by the traffic authorities.
People are indeed becoming very spiteful about such on-and-off futile experiments imposed on them by police or traffic authorities. If the politicians in power had their ears to the ground, they would not have failed to hear the growingly loud embittered murmurs of the suffering people on these scores.