City traffic gone haywire

To say that the traffic in the capital is in a total mess would be a gross understatement. Nothing can describe the chaos and the unmitigated pain that the commuters have been going through every day, particularly in the month of Ramadan, and it seems that all those that are responsible to eradicate the chaos have raised their hands up in surrender and given up on the issue. The police say the traffic problem needs a long term solution, while the two city corporations won't accept that they have a role in seeing an end to this problem.

It is difficult to accept the argument that there is no short term solution to the traffic chaos of Dhaka. But we do not see any palpable action for a long term solution either. There are many causative factors of the traffic chaos, during the month of Ramadan in particular, and the two city corporations must come forward and take stern but necessary steps to ease the problem. It is for them to free the roads and the pavements of illegal occupation. Whatever little is done to free the pavements, they are reoccupied no sooner than they are freed. If footpath markets are indispensable then the city corporations should have arranged long ago for alternative locations for the small traders, who occupy the roads and the pavements, to ply their trade on.

Apart from the physical distress that the city dwellers are going through, the chaos on the streets is exacting a huge cost on our economy. And to do nothing about it quickly amounts to inexcusable negligence.