Ensuring safety on waterways

A press briefing held in the city on August 5 bringing together experts on safety highlighted that graft is rampant in the shipping ministry that allows for unfit vessels to ply the country's waterways. This comes in the backdrop of the third anniversary of the sinking of Pinak-6, a double-deck passenger launch that sank in the Padma River which was heavily overloaded. Speakers contend that the investigations that are formed to investigate disasters such as those by the ministry seldom bring in experts and that allow vessel owners to go scot free.

Every year, we are faced with dozens of such accidents where the vessels plying our waterways have fitness certificates that have been obtained through speed money and vessels that are being piloted by unsafe hands. But as pointed out by experts, the so-called probes into these disasters seldom put the blame on owners. Indeed, for those who either lose lives or suffer injury, there is little comfort in terms of compensation. This culture of patronising the vessel owners is costing lives but there is hardly any effort to change the system.

We have been covering the issue of safety on waterways for some time now and now that Eid-ul-Azha is barely a month away, the need for better managing our waterways has become all the more important. We would rather not witness disasters the likes of Pinak-6 in the future, but for that to happen, the regulatory bodies need to be made free of graft.