DMP role called into question
Dhaka Metropolitan Police traffic department is failing to get unfit buses, buses without route permits and age-old buses off the streets. It is seizing them during the day and releasing them in the evening.
DMP Commissioner AKM Shahidul Hoque said they seized 386 buses in two days--Monday and Tuesday--but had to release them, as the DMP does not have proper vehicle impounding facilities.
Sources, however, said most of the seized buses are released for handsome bribes while some are let loose as powerful people, including officials of the police department, lobby for them to be released.
They say most buses are let go after a traffic stop in exchange for bribes.
DMP Joint Commissioner (traffic) Shafiqur Rahman told The Daily Star, "The seized unfit buses are released after the owners pay fines and sign a Tk 150 stamp paper promising not to run the unfit vehicles on city streets."
"If those buses are found plying the city streets again, they are not returned to the owners," claimed the joint commissioner, adding, "The seized buses are being kept at Rajarbagh Police Lines and Mirpur-14."
Sources, however, say that all seized buses eventually get released in one way or another and a large number of unscrupulous officials of the DMP profit from keeping the unfit buses, buses without route permits and age-old buses in the cycle of seizing and releasing.
The end result is the city is littered with unfit buses, buses without route permits and age-old buses clogging up the streets.
Sources in Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and DMP said over 5,500 buses and minibuses ply the city streets and at least 30 percent of them are more than 15 years old and also unfit. Buses older than 15 years are not supposed to run on the streets of Dhaka and Chittagong cities.
Sources said the actual numbers of buses and unfit buses are a lot higher than what the official figures claim.
On August 20, 2008, the Dhaka Metropolitan Transport Committee decided not to give route permits in Dhaka and Chittagong cities to buses 15 years or more old. It asked bus owners to replace them with CNG-run 52-seater ones.
The bus owners are ignoring the decision and running unfit buses, buses without route permits and age-old buses as usual.
The DMP commissioner said they have strengthened their drives against unfit buses and the drives would continue till Eid-ul-Fitr.
The DMP had launched another drive on October 17 last year against buses without fitness certificates and route permits.
The DMP had then seized about 500 buses and filed over 3,000 cases in just four days but all of the buses were eventually released and they are now plying the city streets.
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