Another gaping hole in the middle of the road!
The picture in yesterday's paper of a huge hole in Circular Road in Motijheel may leave the reader weary of repetition. For how many dozens of similar pictures have we published on the back or front pages of this paper? And how many editorials have we written highlighting the issue of public safety and the way it is constantly threatened by such negligence by the authorities concerned? We only have to recall the heart-breaking death of three-year-old Jihad who had fallen into an abandoned shaft, near his home in Shahjahanpur, to remind ourselves of the extent of the danger such callousness poses.
In that particular case that had caused a huge public outcry, three of the engineers involved in the development project were given long prison sentences for the negligence they were responsible for. Yet what lessons have our authorities learnt from this cruel episode? Not much, it seems, considering the number of instances of such hazardous holes in a road or footpath or a footbridge left open for any hapless pedestrian to fall into and be grievously injured.
We all know that when any kind of development work is being done, the project engineers and city corporation authorities must make sure that public safety is not in any way threatened. In yesterday's picture, we see a fairly big excavation in the middle of the road exposing the mouth of a tunnel underground. It does not take much imagination to envision a terrible accident of someone or some vehicle unwittingly falling into the pit.
We expect that the authorities responsible for this particular development work will immediately take action to cordon off the hole with proper alerting signboards and fences as is the expected practice. We must also urge the government to enforce the rules and regulations of safe development work on those who carry out these projects, imposing the necessary punitive actions on anyone who violates them. Lives can be saved from these simple measures.
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