Lack of BRT’s safety measures alarms road users

The implementing authority of the BRT Line-3 has so far spent Tk 5.57 crore for ensuring safety at the project site, but it has failed to do so. The deaths of five people in August are a testament to the failure.
If this is the case, what is the rationale for such allocation and spending? This ADB-aided project has been the source of sufferings and agonies for tens of thousands of commuters who have the misfortune to pass through this section of Dhaka-Mymensingh road, not far from Dhaka International Airport. Slated to be completed in five years, the project has been running for 10 years now and there is no definite timetable of its completion, even though the authorities have recently set the target for July next year. This BRT project, of all the mega projects that we have seen and known, has been one of the slowest in progress.
As the work made its snail-pace progress workers started dumping huge concrete girders piled one upon another; bringing in sands and keeping the materials uncovered so the commuters can be bothered as they pass through; uncovered gutters making driving through the busy area dangerous and above all no safety measures or warning in sight. All these things, summed up as gross irregularities and extreme lack of sensitivity to the pains of the people by the officials concerned. The commuters on Sunday again suffered the worst since morning when the rain started at the crack of dawn. The unbearable traffic congestion was created from Gazipur-Tongi and Abdullapur to Airport Road amid the downpour and stagnation of water in different parts of the road, causing immense sufferings to the pedestrians.
It is to be noted that in August, five people including two children crushed to death as a BRT girder fell on a private car in Uttara. The tragedy has evoked an angry response from none other than the country’s prime minister who ordered the relevant authorities to properly investigate the incident and nab those responsible for it. Punish the ‘culprits’. That’s the public demand which has been echoed by the head of the government. To identify the culprits a preliminary committee investigation had already been done with fingers of blame pointed to the Chinese contractor company and a laboured effort to save others who can’t in any way get off the hook. We can’t expect a truly independent finding if the officials involved with the project and its irregularities are themselves the judges?