The death of two school students in a road accident on Sunday have sparked a nationwide protest and brought to the fore the issue of taking unfit vehicles off city roads.
The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), however, said it would not be an easy task to accomplish.
BRTA officials said the task of ascertaining the number of unfit vehicles actually plying on the roads would be difficult to complete within the near future.
According to BRTA data, around 312,946 vehicles are plying on the road across the country without fitness certificates. There are 93,604 vehicles without any fitness certificates in Dhaka alone.
BRTA assistant director Md Sanaul Haque told The Independent that the transport regulator, in reality, “has no idea how many vehicles are actually there on road plying without any fitness certificate”.
“Let me give you an example. We gave over 10,000 permits to different cabs that are no longer on the road. As per the existing law, they should have surrendered their permits, but that didn’t happen. So, these cabs automatically got included in the list of vehicles that haven’t renewed their permits on time,” he explained.
The BRTA official said they have on a number of occasions placed notices in national newspapers in this regard, but only a few ever responded to the call. The transport regulator follows certain official procedures and the renewal of fitness certificate for a vehicle could only be done if a vehicles owner comes to renew it, he added.
“Yes, we can take action against the rouge owner who doesn’t bother to bring his/her vehicle for fitness renewal despite knowing the provision of punitive measure against them. But you have to understand our limitations. We've only five magistrates, and it's almost impossible to check any significant number of vehicles even if they work all day,” he said.
BRTA director (enforcement) Hasan Al Amin told The Independent that all vehicles must pass at least 30 different tests to get fitness certificates. “We've only 70 inspectors who are in charge of issuing fitness certificates to over 20 lakh vehicles,” he said.
He admitted that BRTA officials have been issuing fitness certificates to vehicles without properly following the inspection procedures set by the transport regulatory body.
He also said the main conditions for fitness are: unchanged original design, proper functioning of brakes and gears, proper functioning of lights, no emission of black smoke and proper paint. “But in most cases, it's not possible for the inspectors to check all these aspects,” he added.
He further said many unfit buses, most of them without any route permits, have been plying on highways across the country. “A large number of vehicles plying on the road are without any permits. Most of them are old and unfit,” he added.
He said the regional transport committee, headed by the deputy commissioner of each district, is in charge of issuing route permits to vehicles that ply on intra-district routes, while the divisional committee, headed by him, is in charge of issuing permits for vehicles plying on inter-district routes.
“For inter-district routes, bus-owners usually have good-condition buses and take route permits from the BRTA. But buses plying on intra-district routes are poorly monitored because of lack of law enforcement. Many unfit buses operate on such routes,” he added.
Amin said the BRTA has decided to outsource vehicle fitness inspection through motor workshops to change the prevailing situation. “We’ve also amended Rule 70 of the Motor Vehicle Ordinance, 1983, and included Sub-section 70-A—where it is stated that the licensing and registration of motor workshops should be given by the transport regulator—in accordance with the existing number of vehicles,” he added.
“In other countries, authorised workshops successfully check the fitness of vehicles. If we do the same, there will be fewer vehicles without fitness on the streets,” he told The Independent.
Prof. Shamsul Huq, former director of Accident Research Institute (ARI) under the Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET), said that the process of fitness certification has long remained unscientific. “These fitness certificates make very little difference. If you look at the capital, you will find a large number of tempo vehicles. Just by taking a look at them, you will realise that none of those are qualified to have a fitness certificate. But they are plying on the roads,” he added.
Prof. Haq also said that there are at least 800,000 unregistered makeshift ‘Nasimon,’ ‘Karimon’ and ‘Bhatbhat’ vehicles that have neither fitness nor registration. “This calls for an effective drive against vehicles without registration and fitness. Strict criteria should be maintained in issuing fitness certificates and proper equipment must be used for the purpose.”