Mutation of human hauliers

We are very good at innovating and modifying things. Only if that were for the benefit of the people and authorised by law, but it is not. The crude, illegal and dangerous improvisations are done to serve the narrow economic interest of a handful of people. 

A recent example of such "creativity" was exposed by this paper in one of its reports yesterday which informs us that human hauliers, originally meant to carry 15 passengers, have been extended and made into a minibus to carry more than double that number. 

This is yet another addition to other illegal contraptions—like the so-called Kariman and Nasiman—which the productive mind of some people has conjured up to be used to carry people. The regrettable aspect is that these devices are major contributors to the hundreds of road accidents and thousands of deaths every year in this country.  And even worse is the fact that they ply the streets with impunity.

The natural question that follows is, where are the police and the BRTA? When thousands of law abiding private vehicle owners have to stand in long queues to get road permits and fitness certificates for their vehicles or risk having their vehicles impounded immediately they get on the road, how come these modified and dangerous vehicles continue to run without being hauled up by the police? And one cannot imagine that these vehicles have BRTA fitness certificates. 

The irony is that some of the workshops doing the modifications are in the close vicinity of the BRTA office in Mirpur. And we think the excuse of the police of manpower shortage for lax drive against these vehicles is a fig leaf to cover their complicity in this matter.