Under an honest government, the country would have developed five times more

Never before in the country’s history so much corruption and bank looting took place as they have during the tenure of this government. At present, the government is fearful of change. This is because they are afraid of the revelation of truth about how huge money was spent on mega projects for mega corruption.

With the surprise of traffic experts, Dhaka South City Corporations has planned to control traffic in its part of the capital by using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which, they have opined, is bound to fail. In this regard the DSCC has appointed a consultant firm, Engineering and Planning Consultants Limited, and already paid Tk 5 crore as the consultancy fee. The firm is going to conduct a feasibility study for running 53 of its designated traffic signal points with AI technology.

Though traffic experts expressed their surprise, we are not doing so, because this is how the relevant authorities take up unreasonable projects thus creating scope for corruption. In the past we have seen many such projects ended up in failure with squandering of public funds of this poor nation.

According to a report of a national daily yesterday, Tk 119 crore was spent on Dhaka’s traffic signal lights, but now the truth is the traffic police are poorly handling traffic by hand gesturing, often using, in some instances, ropes, cones, and bamboo fences. The traffic maintenance system in Dhaka, or in the whole of Bangladesh for that matter, remains very backdated, to say the least.

There are reasons for this archaic system. Firstly, the traffic police like to maintain traffic remaining present at the traffic points allegedly to extort money illegally from vehicles that often violate the traffic rules in absence of a proper traffic management system. Secondly, as the expert has pointed out, the road network here is not disciplined without any lanes, and both motorised and non motorized vehicles ply the same road.

Moreover, the number of vehicles on the roads is so huge that no science, including the digital system or AI technology, will work here. Still, when it is a matter of vehicles carrying VIPs all traffic movement is suspended giving way to these vehicles. And if a political programme takes place in the city with rallies going through the roads, all hell is let loose on that day as far as jams are concerned.

Therefore, the problems that are persisting on the roads must be addressed first before going for installing systems, however scientific, so that they work. In the past, the city authorities went for installation of digital signal lights, countdowns for light change, solar panels to power them, and digital display boards at intersections, but all went in vain.