All the decisions made in coordination meetings of service agencies since 2016 to effectively manage Dhaka roads and traffic only remained in papers.
At least eight such coordination meetings were held led by both of the city mayors after Prime Minister’s office had published a circular empowering them to coordinate all the service providing agencies in Bangladesh’s capital city.
In all the meetings traffic management issue was given the first priority, on which agencies engaged in elaborate discussions and took a number of decisions but none of them were implemented.
The agencies collectively initiated move to implement a few of them including hawker eviction from footpath and mobile court against unfit vehicles, but they failed to bring them to completion.
At the first meeting of Dhaka North City Corporation in August 2016, top officials of the agencies identified illegal parking as a major cause for countless traffic jams at 13 points, including Farmgate, Mohakhali, Gulshan, Bijoy Sarani, Uttara and Mirpur.
To solve the problems, a meeting chaired by late mayor Annisul Huq decided on a number of moves — not to allow haphazard parking, freeing parking spaces of multi-storey buildings in the area, banning rickshaw to ply on major roads and facilitating overpass and one-way parking on less busy lanes.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police, RAJUK, Dhaka WASA, BRTA, Roads and Highway and DNCC were designated to implement the tasks, however, no noticeable headway was made.
Later, in all meetings traffic management issue was taken as the first priority but none of the decisions were implemented in the last two years.
Dhaka North mayor Annisul Huq also initiated city bus route franchise system, but that is also still in paper.
Like DNCC, Dhaka South City Corporation in August 2016 decided to demark 38 spots for bus stoppage or bus bay, ensure of removal of illegal stands, eviction of hawkers and drives against rundown buses with immediate effect.
DSCC-led mobile court conducted a number of drives against rundown buses and against hawkers but they failed to check the situation to become worse, said the city people.
After the massive student movement for road safety in August, prime minister Sheikh Hasina also asked the Dhaka South City mayor Sayeed Khokon to lead a 10-member committee to bring discipline to the transport sector.
Transport expert and also a member of the committee Dr SM Saleh Uddin said that the city traffic problems intensified gradually as the authorities took only decisions without ever implementing them.
When problems began to multiply things got out of hand, said Saleh Uddin.
‘Pedestrians running on the road for the lack of footpaths; bus drivers running their busses to be ahead of other buses are examples from which we did not take any lessons,’ he added.
He said that the committee now finalised a transport plan after incorporating the previous plan for introducing bus route franchise system.
‘Six companies are to operate buses on 22 routes,’ he said.
He said the committee requested for the implementation of the plan in three phases which might take three years to end.
Dhaka South City Mayor Mohammad Sayeed Khokon said that they could not implement the previous decisions for various reasons but would immediately start to implement the latest one envisioned by late mayor Annisul Huq.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia on
Thursday admitted that the DMP and other authorities concerned have failed to ensure discipline on roads in the capital over the years.
Published in: The Newage on March 23rd,2019
