Allocate 10,000cr in budget for road safety: JKS

Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity on Thursday demanded Tk 10,000 crore in the upcoming national budget, including an economic code, for ensuring safety on roads across the country.
There is no economic code for measures to prevent road accidents, it said and demanded the budgetary allocation for providing training to drivers, creating public awareness, rescuing the victims, providing them with treatment and giving financial assistance to the affected people, and introducing an economic code. The Samity leaders said the government is now taking various steps to reduce road accidents, but the scenario is pretty different when it comes to the national budget as there is hardly adequate allocation to ensure safety on roads.
They came up with the demand while addressing a roundtable discussion titled ‘Safe Roads and Our Responsibilities’ at the Jatiya Press Club, marking the 5th World Safe Road Week.
Jatri Kalyan Samity also announced a 15-point proposal, focusing on necessary steps to reduce road fatalities.
Citing World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, Jatri Kalyan Samity’s Secretary General Mozammel Haque Chowdhury who chaired the seminar said around 1.2 million people die and 20-50 million more are injured in accidents across the globe every year.
Casualties in the lower and middle-income countries are higher (21.5 and 19.5 in every 1 lakh respectively) than the developed countries (10.3 in every 1 lakh), he said.