According to a DS report published yesterday, in October 2019, a taskforce headed by the Home Minister himself was created to implement the 111-point directive that was, in turn, prepared by a 16-member team headed by a former shipping minister. Since then, the taskforce sat two times, most recently in December 2019, to decide how to implement these directives. However, both meetings have proved to be futile, which is most evident in the ever-increasing number of road crashes and deaths and injuries caused by them. Now, the taskforce is going to sit for the third time.

In 2020, a total of 4,996 people died and 5,085 others were injured due to road accidents. According to the Road Safety Foundation, in January 2021 alone, 484 people died and 673 people were injured in 427 road crashes, which is 25.58 percent higher than the same month in the previous year. All the initiatives taken by the government so far to curb road crashes, including observing several police weeks, laying out a 17-point directive and enacting the Road Transport Act in 2018 have resulted in nothing. According to data from the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), there are 31 lakh unfit vehicles on our roads, and 77 percent of the drivers of these vehicles don't have any driving licenses.

In the second meeting of the aforementioned taskforce, its members decided that drivers, conductors and helpers of public transport will be given appointment letters. However, both transport owners' and transport workers' groups have not implemented this directive yet. While the general secretary of the Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation said that they sent letters to the owners' association to implement this directive, the secretary general of the Bangladesh Road Transport Owners Association blamed Covid-19 as the roadblock in implementing these directives. It seems that shifting blame from one side to the other has become the norm of these transport sector bodies, while road accidents continue unabated.

As the taskforce sits to decide how to fix the problem of road accidents for the third time, we fervently hope that on this occasion, some clear directives will be adopted and implemented. The taskforce must work as an independent body that can apply the 111 recommendations (given by the 16 member team last year) and not be beholden to any other body. Also, this taskforce has to keep both the owners' association and the workers' federation in regular check and take immediate measures to bring these two private bodies to book for any irregularities. We sincerely hope that the taskforce will act as a powerful watchdog for our transport sector so that it can enforce all the directives that will make our roads safer and hold accountable those who are recklessly endangering lives.