Robberies, accidents on highways on the rise

Travelling on highways across the country became dreadful and unsafe with an alarming rise in robbery and fatal accidents due largely to a lack of adequate policing, reckless driving and poor maintenance of the roads and bridges.
In the month of July alone, at least 20 robberies were reported on the highways connecting cities and district towns, according to police and newspaper reports. But many cases of robbery and extortion on the roads are not reported as victims do not bother to go to police to lodge complaints, the sources said.
Apart from looting cash and valuables from passengers, specially those travelling in night coaches, armed bandits frequently target Chittagong bound cargo traffic carrying export items.
Senior officers in the police, who wanted not to be identified, confided that lack of enforcement of speed control rules leads to risky races along the highways among long haul vehicles, causing accidents while trying to overtake each other on bridges and risky turnings.
Police recorded some 546 road highway accidents in 2008 on the Chittagong region alone where a rise in road mishaps was registered in Noakhali and the hilly roads in CHT.
Police would blame drivers’ mistakes for most of the highway accidents. Road safety experts however believe that many of these fatal accidents could be avoided if speed limit was enforced and dangerous overtaking checked.
Highways are also swamped with small vehicles alongside the large inter-district coaches and it is often difficult for them to steer smoothly and safely through stretches of the roads that pass through.
Road accidents kill about 4,000 people every year and leave roughly 25,000 people injured, according police statistics.
But robbery in particular is of great concerns for night-time travellers and exporters lugging their cargo to the ports or from ports to warehouses in other cities.
On July 21, a gang of robbers barricaded the highway in Bogra at about 11:30pm and stopped public transports and robbed passengers of all their money and valuables, including gold ornaments and mobile phones.
And earlier on July 8, bandits killed a passenger and left 20 others injured while committing robbery on a bus. They took away the valuables of the other passengers on the highway near Narsingdi on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway.
Covered vans carrying goods to and from Chittagong port are easy targets of these highway robbers. Such attacks have become a new headache for apparel exporters, who carry most of their merchandises through the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway.
‘Despite steps by law enforcers, we are not seeing any respite from highway robberies… These bandits stop the loaded vehicles and collect tolls and loot export items or raw materials,’ said Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Abdus Salam Murshedy.
The highway police say they are not properly equipped to patrol along some 8,500 kilometres of national and regional highways and roads to ensure passengers’ safety and enforce speed limit for vehicles.
This special police wing, created in 2005, is supposed to control vehicle speed on the highways and check over-loading and documents of the vehicles, besides ensuring safety of the travellers.
Highway police deputy inspector general Sohrab Hossain said his forces were trying to ensure passenger safety on highways keeping patrols along some 3,723 kilometres of national highways and 4,833 kilometres of regional highways on a regular basis.
They have 24 highway police stations with 48 outposts to guard the country’s highways.
‘We cannot run our activities at a speed we are supposed to do. Fund constraints and manpower shortage are the key reasons that limit our services,’ he said, adding that two-third posts of the sergeants are lying vacant for months.
About robberies, Sohrab said they are legally handicapped to take actions against the offenders. ‘The gazette of the highway police is yet to be published and as a result the police cannot file cases against the suspected robbers,’ he added.
‘If we seize any vehicle or arrest anybody, the local police file the cases and investigate the allegations. After the gazette notification, the highway police will be able to file cases or take steps against these highway bandits,’ he said.
The highway police boss admitted their failure to identify the robbers as they board the buses in guise of passengers.
The highway police have got some pick-ups for regular patrol, but of them are in bad shape. ‘We get about 300 litres of fuel a month for patrolling and the local police superintendents allocate the fuel from their fund,’ he said adding ‘How can a team patrol continuously with such small quantity of fuel?’
However, the government has allocated a fund to the highway police for fuel in this fiscal year to make the forces more functional, said Sohrab. He suggested setting up of a base station for the highway police to help them work efficiently.

Courtesy of NewAgebd