Deliver on road safety promises

It is outrageous that the government has still not framed a new action plan for road safety, even though the tenure of the last one expired two years ago. Although a draft National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan 2021-2024 was prepared over a year ago, it is yet to be approved. As this newspaper reported on April 3, 2022, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) placed a draft before a meeting of National Road Safety Council (NRSC) on February 18 last year. During the meeting, led by the Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader, a committee was formed to scrutinise and finalise the draft within one month. Even though the committee submitted its report, having updated the draft, the plan apparently could not be sanctioned as no NRSC meeting was held since then.

At a time when road crashes and the number of their victims have shot through the roof, why is it that there is so little urgency among the authorities to formulate an action plan for road safety? A total of 5,088 people were killed in 5,472 road crashes in 2021, which was 30 percent higher than the previous year, according to a police report. This inexcusable delay on the officials' part exposes how little they care about road safety issues—and to an extent, about the lives of ordinary people.

As recently as March 29 this year, the World Bank approved USD 358 million for a project to help Bangladesh improve road safety and reduce fatalities and injuries from road accidents in selected high-risk highways and district roads. Why is it that, while acquiring these funds, we don't have any comprehensive action plan to that end? Before financing the project, the World Bank in January said that despite the existence of different bodies to ensure road safety in Bangladesh, the number of deaths from road crashes refuses to go down because these organisations are not held accountable. That no one has been held responsible for the failure to frame a new road safety action plan—which successive governments have framed since 1997—for two years is another example of that.

We have heard government high-ups repeatedly making lofty promises in regards to road safety—particularly following the student movement for safer roads—and then failing to deliver consistently. We, therefore, demand that the authorities immediately frame the new action plan and take comprehensive actions to deliver safer roads for people.