Minister for dividing highways into 4 lanes

Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain BSS, Dhaka

Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain on Thursday said all highways in the country should be made into four lanes as the first and foremost requisite to ensure road safety to avert high rate of road accidents with about 3,500 causalities every year.

"We should give utmost importance on making the highways into four lanes with divider, and if necessary, invite private sector for the task if donor community become reluctant to provide fund", the minister told reporters at Zia International Airport after returning from First UN Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow.

"So far, not a single highway in our country covers the international standard of road safety," Abul Hossain said adding Dhaka-Chittagong national highway, after making it into four lanes, is expected to be first of its kind.

According to the Roads and Highways Department (R&H), which is responsible for the management of the National, Regional and Zila road network, the country has about 21,000 kms highway network, out of which about 3,500 kilometer are of national highways.

"My experience from the conference is that we did not gave due attention to the matter in the past and it might be either for lack of negligence of the previous governments or fund shortage", the minister, who led a four-member Bangladesh team in the two-day conference from November 19-20, said.

The Road Safety Conference was arranged in line with the last UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution for providing the governments, especially low- and middle-income countries with guidance on good practice to support action to tackle road safety risk factors.

The UNGA resolution came in the backdrop of a WHO/World Bank report that road traffic injuries emerged as a major public health problem across the world, which caused death of more than 1.2 million people and injury of as many as 50 million a year.

The Moscow declaration urged the UNGA to announce the decade 2011-2020 as the "Decade of Action for Road Safety" with a goal to stabilise and then reduce the forecast level of global road deaths by 2020, he said.

It also decide to evaluate progress of five years following

the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety and urged the international donor community to provide additional funding in support of global, regional and country road safety, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Sharing his experience about multi-level underground railway lines in Moscow and 'navigation system' road traffic in the road from Milan, Italy to Geneva, the communications minister said Bangladesh might explore the ideas to negate traffic problem and improve its road safety measures.

He pointed out government's plan to improve traffic management in the Dhaka city saying all projects of the overpasses at level crossing in the city have been submitted to the Planning Commission.

"The construction work of the overpass will begin on that very day when the Planning Commission will approve the projects," the minister said adding that the newly introduced signaling system in the capital would also continue to bring the traffic management system alike modern cities.

Later, the minister inaugurated two foot-over-bridge

constructed by Roads and Highways Department at Staff Road and Joar Sahara on Banani-Tongi-Joydevpur road in the city.

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