Against Traffic: 'VIPs' at it still

Vehicles carrying high-ranking officials continue to drive against traffic on city streets despite the ongoing police crackdown on people flouting the traffic rule.

Some of them got lenient punishments and one was let off the hook during the traffic police drive yesterday.

It was 5:15pm during the evening rush hour when a black SUV (Dhaka Metro Gha-14-2085) “carrying a high-ranking police official” was heading towards Bijoy Sarani intersection from Tejgaon on the wrong side.

Two traffic sergeants on duty stopped the vehicle and one of them talked to the driver near the intersection. The driver said an additional deputy inspector general of police was in the vehicle that had tinted glass.

The sergeant asked for the vehicle's documents and fined the driver Tk 400 for driving against traffic, even though he could have been fined Tk 1,000. The vehicle was turned around and made to go with the traffic flow.

Journalists present at the scene tried to talk to the driver but he declined to comment.

Liton Kumar Saha, deputy traffic police commissioner, later told The Daily Star that the police officer in question was not in the vehicle. 

Around 6:50pm, a vehicle carrying Joint Secretary Satyendra Kumar Sarkar of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief was travelling on the wrong side of Hare Road from Kakrail.

Traffic police intercepted the SUV near Sugandha Foreign Service Academy as passengers of passing buses clapped and cheered police officials thinking they were punishing traffic rules violators.

The driver of the SUV failed to produce any driving licence or documents of the vehicle.

Instead of having the car towed and the driver arrested or fined, traffic police just turned the vehicle around.

“The driver went on the wrong side ignoring my directive,” Satyendra told reporters there.

Satyendra's driver and vehicle was let go with no punitive action against them but just minutes before a car was fined Tk 2,900 for travelling on the wrong side and for expired documents at the same spot.

During the traffic police drive between 5:30pm and 7:00pm there, seven motorbikes and an auto-rickshaw were fined.

Two cars and 47 motorbikes were fined for similar offences at Bijoy Sarani intersection.

In the hour before the drive began yesterday, The Daily Star correspondent saw nine motorbikes taking the wrong side of Hare Road. Four of them were driven by policemen.

Mosleh Uddin Ahmed, additional commissioner for traffic police and who was at Bijoy Sarani, said yesterday was the third day of their drive.

On Sunday, they had fined 57 drivers for taking the wrong side of Hare Road. A state minister, a lawmaker, several top bureaucrats, an army officer and journalists were among those penalised.

Vehicles of a senior and a deputy secretary of the home ministry, an additional secretary of the ministry of communications and an officer of the public administration ministry were also fined.

On Monday, the driver of Secretary Mafruha Sultana of the Rural Development and Co-Operatives Division was fined for the second consecutive day for travelling against traffic. Mafruha was in the car on both occasions, on Hare Road on Sunday and near Bangla Motor the next day. 

Driver Babul Mollah was later “suspended” and the ministry issued a show-cause notice on him, Mohammad Zakir Hossain, public relation officer of the LGRD ministry told The Daily Star.

Traffic official Mosleh Uddin said, “We will go on, as the action has got government endorsement and public support.”

He said nearly 350 vehicles are fined every day for driving on the wrong-side of the streets.    

According to traffic police records, police fined 1,16,026 vehicles in the last fiscal year for travelling against traffic.

Cars carrying ministers, lawmakers, high-ranking civil and military officials, ruling party leaders and journalists going against traffic while other people stuck in tailbacks had become a common phenomenon in Dhaka.

Police over the years have been blamed for not doing anything meaningful to stop this. Rather, they have been blamed for facilitating the so-called VIPs flout traffic rules.

They had installed retractable spike strips on Hare Road in 2014 to prevent people driving on the wrong side of the road but removed them after a few days.

Police officials and a rights activists yesterday said the people who were supposed to set examples were the ones violating the traffic rule the most as if they were above the law.

Sultana Kamal, chairperson of Transparency International Bangladesh and former adviser to a caretaker government, said such behaviour emanates from a sense of being privileged and due to a kind of superiority complex.

“ … Everybody loves to think that 'privilege is mine',” she said, adding, “There is nothing called governance, self-restraint, discipline and accountability in our collective culture.”

About the sudden police action, she said it would not leave any far-reaching impact as these offenders would not feel embarrassed or be ashamed of their actions.