THE death of another student in a road accident involving a city corporation dustcart suggests that the authorities have failed to bring order to the operation of their vehicles. A student of the Motijheel Ideal School died on April 26 after being hit by a dustcart of the Dhaka South City Corporation. The mayor said that the driver of the dustcart was not authorised to drive the vehicle and the corporation would take stern action against all responsible for such irregularities. The mayor, however, made similar promises in November 2021, when a dustcart killed a Notre Dame College student, sparking road safety protests that ended with the mayor鈥檚 assurances of justice and action to stop such incidents. With the latest incident, at least nine have died in accidents involving city corporation dustcarts since April 2021. What is highly worrying is that city authorities remain indifferent to the safe operation of their dustcarts and have taken no effective measures to discipline them.
In a number of accidents earlier, it was found that the dustcarts had violated traffic rules and, at times, were not driven by city corporation drivers. In at least three accidents in Dhaka, it was found that the dustcarts were driven by a cleaner, an assistant mechanic of the corporation and a helper. The cleaner and the assistant mechanic had driven the dustcarts by 鈥榤anaging鈥� some officials of the city corporations for years. It was also revealed that the corporations were not paying the illegal drivers, who used to make money by selling off the fuel of the vehicles. All this suggests unchecked and unabated irregularities in both city authorities of Dhaka. A lack of monitoring, coupled with inadequate human resources and dustcart drivers, has for long marked the city waste collection and the transport. Both city corporations have an acute shortage of human resources, especially dustcart drivers, with 168 drivers for the 330 heavy and light vehicles that carry waste in the city. Such irregularities and lack of resources, however, are not typical of Dhaka. In February, an apparel worker died after being hit by a city corporation dustcart in Gazipur. Fatal accidents involving vehicles owned by city corporations or any other state-owned enterprises are unacceptable, but they happen quite often.
The filing a police case, followed by unmet promises, only demonstrates the continued apathy towards lives of people. It is unacceptable that the city authorities have outsourced waste transport for years without putting an effective oversight in place. The city authorities must, therefore, own up to the irregularities, compensate the victim families, stop the practice of outsourcing, take punitive action against the people who have let this happen for years, appoint the required number of drivers and train the drivers regularly.
