Ensure safety at all project sites in the country
After the avoidable loss of five lives – six lives, if we count the guard who was similarly killed last year – by the fall of a girder of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Line-3, the authorities finally seem to be prioritising safety precautions at project sites. Reportedly, the Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) has issued directives to reinforce safety at all its project sites, the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) has called a meeting of all implementing agencies, and the Road Transport and Highways Division (RHD) has insisted that the contractors submit a safety plan to be approved before work can resume on the BRT project. These are undoubtedly welcome moves, but we can hardly pat the state agencies on the back for doing what they should have done at the beginning of the projects – not after lives have already been lost needlessly.
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Why must a safety plan be submitted now, and why must directives be issued to maintain international safety standards at project sites? How can a Tk 4,268 crore project lack a safety plan and dedicated officers to ensure compliance, when this should have taken precedence at the initial design and implementation stages? Despite previous accidents at the sites, why did the authorities not evaluate their blind spots and take urgent steps to hold the contractors and officers who were negligent accountable? If, as the DNCC mayor claims, he had conveyed his concern to the project implementation authorities on "several occasions," why did the authorities not respond or take action? What, if anything, did the mayor do to follow up on his concerns when he saw that no action was being taken? They must answer to the public, and they must do so now.
Shifting the blame onto the contractors alone, as the probe committee report appears to have done, and taking stopgap measures to tackle a PR nightmare will not bring about the structural reforms necessary to make our roads and highways safe. If the authorities are really serious about ensuring public safety, they must own up to their omissions and hold those in positions of power responsible for the grave oversight that has led to the unacceptable loss of lives. Instead of pointing fingers at others, they must point it towards themselves and ask what needs to change within their respective institutions. They must examine what's missing in how development projects are currently conceived, designed and implemented, and also check corruption at all stages of the process.
Most importantly, the government and all the relevant implementation agencies must now urgently take stock of all the ongoing development projects across Bangladesh and take proper measures to ensure that international safety protocols are being followed at each and every site. Whatever action they take at the BRT site must be replicated across all development sites in the country for any measure to be truly meaningful.
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