Drivers who kill cannot be penalised?

There can hardly be any denying that incidents of road accidents have lately left people rattled. The feeling gets worse when efforts are seen to be underway to prevent any prosecution of those guilty of causing these accidents. In the past couple of months, rash driving has claimed the lives of a very large number of citizens, including filmmaker Tareque Masud and television personality Mishuk Munier, prompting citizens' groups to demand that road safety be guaranteed by the authorities. There have been demands that errant drivers be taken to task under the law as a deterrent against the road rage they let loose as they drive their vehicles down the streets.
Unfortunately, events over the past few days have clearly shown that all this justified demand for putting a leash on risky driving has inflamed a section of transport workers, so much so that they have now demanded that a driver arrested for rash behaviour on the road be released. On Wednesday, they enforced a strike in twenty-one districts of the country demanding a halt to a filing of cases under Section 302 of the penal code against errant drivers. That outrage was, of course, preceded by Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan's public pronouncement that such drivers cannot be called killer drivers but service providers. We note that at the same time Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain, along with Shahjahan Khan having had a meeting with the transport workers on Wednesday, assured them that all their demands would be met. One of those demands is the release of the bus driver in question.
The conclusion one can draw here is simple enough. It is that for some trade unions, or sections of trade unions, an open violation of the law and established norms is swiftly becoming regular practice. That is not how trade unionism should be or conventionally has been.
Clearly, governance is being made a mockery of. To what depths such tendencies, if allowed to go unchecked, can lead the country can only be imagined.