No justice, no compensation

All was going well for Shiuly Begum. A serene family life with her bus driver husband and four children, this was all that she had hoped for.

But then everything changed, all because a bus decided to ply on the wrong side three years ago.

On April 3, 2018, while going to Mirpur from the family's Bashabo home, Shiuly's husband Mizan Kazi was hit by the bus near Purana Paltan. "My husband, who was a bus driver himself, died under one," a sobbing Shiuly told a programme of Nirapad Sarak Chai at Jatiya Press Club yesterday.

Losing the family's only breadwinner, Shiuly had to take the difficult decision to leave their rented flat and go back to her village in Mymensingh, even if this put a halt to the studies of two of her children.

"I don't know whether my five-year-old son will start his schooling. I don't know if I can afford it," she said. In the last three years, she has gone to various ministries and offices. But while justice remained a far cry, she could not even obtain a minimum sum of compensation.

Her story sheds light on how not just families of regular commuters, but even those of transport workers suffer from the chaotic state of the country's roads.

Jannatul Mawa lost her mother in a road accident years ago. After the accident, her father, a covered-van driver, was the only one taking care of her, until he too passed away in a fatal road crash.

Now a 10th-grader at a city school, Mawa said, "Nobody is by our side. No one will understand how it feels losing a loved one in a road crash."

Like Shiuly and Mawa, family members of numerous others, who lost their beloved ones on the road, were present at the session.

Speaking there, Nirapad Sarak Chai chairperson Ilias Kanchan said, "It has been 28 years since I got involved with this movement for safer roads, but we're yet to get it."

"When I started the organisation after losing my wife to a road accident, people called me mad," he recalled.

Speaking as chief guest, Home Minister Asadauzzaman Khan Kamal said, "We have become a nation of law-breakers. I agree with the demand for safe roads and want to work together [with such movements]," he added.

After the session, the road safety platform handed over sewing machines to the family members.