No smile on Bangladesh’s highways

Appalling state of roads, incessant rain, long tailbacks, and heavy traffic caused untold suffering to thousands of people heading towards the capital from their Eid holidays.

Reckless driving and unfit vehicles on highways with no visible step to prevent them continued to kill people on the roads.

At least 111 people have died and scores more were injured in road accidents across the country in the last nine days, including 11 people yesterday.

The figures were based on reported deaths. Many accidents and deaths are not reported to police.

The rush of holidaymakers            towards Dhaka reached its pick on Friday and yesterday. There were gridlocks on Friday night and yesterday at several places on major           highways and two ferry terminals that connect 21 southern districts to the capital.

The Dhaka-Tangail highway had a 65km-long tailback that began Friday night, between Chandra and the Bangabandhu Bridge, highway police said.

“My wife and son fell sick being stuck in a stationary bus for hours,” said Anisur Rahman, a bus passenger.

Hundreds of passengers faced indescribable suffering on the highway yesterday.

“I started from Rangpur at 8:00pm on Friday and reached Mirzapur in 15 hours because of gridlocks that started from the east end of the Bangabandhu Bridge,” bus driver Babu Miah told our Tangail correspondent.

It took Mithun Palma, a university student, 19 hours to reach Dhaka from Natore, which usually takes four hours.

The whole night he had starved as there were no shops where the bus got stuck, he said.

Highway police said the tailbacks were due to heavy flow of vehicles from both ends, especially the north.

Break down of vehicles, reckless driving, unfit vehicles and violation of traffic rules made the situation worse, they said.

Nazimuddin, a driver of a bus from Bogra, said dilapidated road was the main reason for the tailbacks.

Incessant rain and the plying of heavy vehicles created potholes on around 25km of road between Kaliakoir and Elenga of Tangail, around 10km of road between Ashulia and Baipail, and around 40km of road from the west of the Bangabandhu Bridge to Chandrakona of Sirajganj.

Illegal vehicles, like locally made Nasiman, Kariman, and Bhotbhoti, are responsible for accidents on highways, said Shahidullah, another bus driver. "The drivers of these small vehicles do not have the experience for driving on the highway and do not know traffic rules. They drive haphazardly," he said.

Huge traffic jams developed on Paturia and Daulatdia ferry terminals Friday night, which continued until yesterday afternoon.

Manoj Kumar Adhikary, his wife and three and half-year-old daughter, started from Benapole at 1:00pm on Friday to go to Narayanganj via Dhaka. But their bus got stuck in a jam ahead of Daulatdia for around four hours.

They eventually crossed the river around 9:45pm but got stuck in another jam between Manikganj and Dhamrai. They reached Dhaka around 2:30am yesterday. It was supposed to be a six-hour journey.

At the Paturia end, a bus broke down at Nayarhat area of Savar on the Dhaka-Paturia highway creating a gridlock, said Sheikh Mohammad Nasim, deputy general manager of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC).

At Kawrakandi ferry terminal, over 100 vehicles got stranded for hours from the early hours of yesterday as ferries slowed down due to navigability issues. Three ferries were not running at all the whole night, said Ashiquzzaman, assistant general manager of BIWTC.

Even though no major traffic jams were seen on Dhaka-Mymensingh and Dhaka-Sylhet highways, vehicular movement was slow due to the heavy flow of vehicles.

Shitangshu Chakrobortee, Kamalapur station manager, said four to five trains from the north were running around two hours behind schedule due to the rush of passengers and rain.

Over the years, the government took a number of initiatives to ensure people's safe journey but the efforts remained unimplemented. Every year, the government takes some temporary measures ahead of Eids, but those measures do not help much due to alleged lack of monitoring and negligence by the authorities concerned.

Mallick Fakhrul Islam, deputy inspector general (DIG) of highway police, claimed that reckless driving was the reason for accidents on highways.

Over 1,500 cases have been filed between July 19 and July 24 in connection with reckless driving across the country, he said.

About the jams, he said, "We are working round the clock to keep the vehicles moving. But gridlocks sometimes happen due to the heavy flow of traffic as well as narrow roads and bridges."

About illegal vehicles, like Nasiman and Kariman, and unfit vehicles, the DIG claimed that they keep vigil so that those could not be on the highways.