Service providers or killers?

The shipping minister is loathe to call the drivers anything but service providers. What he fails to understand is that service providers have to go by the rules and ply their profe-ssion with a minimum degree of professional competence. And anyone, right from the person holding the highest office of the country down to the ordinary person in the street, who happens to cause grievous harm or death willingly or unwillingly, will have to accept the label that goes with the allegations of killing a person.
One has been watching with unease the efforts of the minister to protect the errant drivers. Regrett-ably, there is a conflictual situation that the PM must address; a powerful politician heading a powerful workers' body and being a minister at the same time. He doesn't hesitate to exhibit his clout by threatening to resign and take along with him the three million odd transport workers. Would it be wrong to suggest that it is this clout that got him the minister's post? It was deplorable to see him rallying his workers' brigade against a road safety activist, as if it is a crime to demand the assurance of our lives.
And although all the road accidents are not due to the drivers, most of them are indeed the result of unskilled drivers, people graduating from a helper to driver overnight, and indulging in jiggery-pokery in issuing driving license.
The minister has come in the news once again, and this time by taking issue with one of his colleagues, the communications minister. And his insistence on the fact that there was no need for academic qualification for a driver stems perhaps from his understanding that there are equally, or less, qualified person than one at the wheels of a vehicle in other professions too.
But one can cry hoarse about these issues without coming to definitive conclusion about the minimum level of academic qualification, if at all, and driving skills. What people want is to arrive safely, and in one piece, to their destinations. And that, going by the statistics of fatalities in the last week of December 2011 only, is becoming less and less probable. Anyone who has travelled by bus on inter-district routes would agree that what is surprising is that the number of accidents is not more. My own experience is that it is only providence and prayers of my loved ones which see me through a tortuous, and a mental and physically enervating, bus journey. And there are many people more compelled than I to take the bus and put their lives in the hands of the so-called service providers.
Bangladesh is the most road-accident prone country and the relevant data will tell you why. Going by the statistics from official sources, 12,000 people are killed in road accidents annually and almost three times that are injured. And the figure of injured is perhaps not correct because many injuries do not get reported at all.
The accident rate per thousand vehicle is even more startling, and I quote, "the annual fatality rate from road accidents in Bangladesh is 85.6 per 10,000 vehicles, which contrasts poorly even with 47.7 in Myanmar and 62.7 in Nepal. The fatality rate in Bangladesh from road accidents specially contrasts with the developed countries where the number of vehicles is many times higher. The fatality rate in those countries is below 3 per 10,000 vehicles."
But it is also true that the drivers are not alone to be blamed for the accidents. The communications ministry, and in particular the R&H Division has a lot to answer for in this regard. That this body has been doing less than its duty and deliberately defaulting on its responsibility is immensely illustrated in its very amusing plea to the communications minister recently that it should not come within the ambit of any external investigation agencies. Why fear external inquiry if one has nothing to hide?
Likewise, the police cannot absolve itself from the responsibility for the deaths. To see buses without tail lights or indicators and even brake lights is not an exception but the rule. Where are the highway patrols and what is the BRTA doing?
Providing safer roads is not doing a favour but ensuring a right. And any government that cannot stop the recurring accidents and loss of life is failing in its bounden duty to ensure citizens' safety. The situation can be improved only by the collective efforts of all the relevant persons and agencies.
It is everyone's remit to ensure safer roads, and the shipping minister cum the executive president of Bangladesh Sharak Paribahan Sramik Federation would do well to shed his obtuse attitude, stop defending the indefensible and ensure that the drivers are trained well before given the responsibility of holding the wheels. Idea of road safety and sense of the rules has much to do with the level of education of the person driving the vehicle. Merely being able to differentiate between a biped and a quadruped is not enough. Have we ever wondered why the fatality rates in developed countries are so low?

The author is Editor Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.