NRSC meeting: Bike ban on highways, action plan on agenda
The National Road Safety Council (NRSC), the apex government body to deal with road safety issues, is going to hold its meeting tomorrow, after a hiatus of 21 months.
The meeting will focus on three main agendas which include National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan-2021-2024, banning motorcycles on highways and no registration to vehicles already declared abandoned.
The last NRSC meeting was held in February last year.
The long delay in holding the meeting has not only affected decision making on important policies but also halted the approval process of the National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan-2021-2024.
As a result, the country does not have any action plan for road safety now, with the tenure of the previous having expired in 2020. The country is now without any road safety plan amid a sharp rise in both road crashes and deaths.
The NRSC meeting is supposed to be held every six months or at the "will" of the council's chief. Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader is the ex-officio chief of the body.
SPIKE IN ROAD CRASHES AND DEATHS
A total of 5,088 people were killed in 5,472 road crashes in 2021, 30 percent higher than the previous year, according to a police report.
Meanwhile, according to police report, in the first eight months of this year, at least 3502 people were killed in 3701 road crashes, a number much lower than the statistics put forward by different road safety organisations.
As such the National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan-2021-2024 will be the main agenda of the meeting, officials said.
"We are going to place the draft of the action plan at the NRSC meeting, which will take decision in this regard," Sheikh Md Mahbub-E-Rabbani, director (road safety) of Bangladesh Road Safety Authority (BRTA) told The Daily Star.
The meeting will be held at BRTA's headquarters in the capital's Banani.
Since 1997, the government has been preparing strategic action plans to improve road safety. Eight action plans have been approved so far, with the last one getting approval in November 2017, with a deadline of December 2020.
The goal of the eighth and last action plan was to achieve the SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) target by halving the number of road accidents, fatalities and injuries by 2020.
But the target could not be achieved, and the UN then revised the deadline to 2030, officials said.
Two months before the last action plan expired, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave directions to prepare a new plan.
BRTA placed the draft of the strategic action plan before a meeting of NRSC on February 18 last year.
According to the draft, authorities aim to reduce road accidents, fatalities and injuries by 20 to 25 percent by the end of 2024, and 50 percent by 2030.
But, Obaidul Quader, at the meeting, formed a committee to examine and finalise the draft. The committee already finalised the draft but the NRSC council meeting could not be held as the minister could not give time, BRTA sources said.
OTHER AGENDAS OF THE NRSC MEETING
After the strategic action plan, the meeting has two more major agendas, BRTA sources said.
One agenda is banning motorcycles on highways and another is no registration to vehicles declared abandoned, they said.
Discussion on banning bikes on highways is going on for last few months as road crashes involving motorcycles have seen a sharp rise in recent years.
A government probe committee in June 2022 recommended that motorcycles should be banned on national highways to reduce the number of accidents.
The two-wheelers can be allowed only if national highways have separate service lanes, added the committee, which found motorcycle accidents to be a major reason behind the rise in fatalities during the last Eid vacation.
The issue of banning bikes also discussed at the last two meeting of a taskforce, led by home minister, to curb the road crashes.
But, lack of public transport, traffic congestion especially in Dhaka has forced people to buy bikes which has become a popular mode of transport.
So, any decision to ban bikes on highways will have an adverse effect, bike users said.
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