Editorial
Highway policing
It must be beefed up to be of good use
IN times like this, when there is a glut of vehicular traffic on the highways carrying home goers to various parts of the country to enjoy the holidays, does one feel the absence of a well organised highway police outfit even more. The present state of the highway police gives it little capacity to perform its assigned tasks.
Needless to say, much of the mishaps on the major highways including highway robberies, some done in broad daylight, and clogging of highways due to accidents, could have been avoided and road journey made safer had we an adequately manned and equipped force capable of exercising effective supervision on the entire stretch of the inter district roads in the country.
Bangladesh has perhaps the highest rate of highway road accidents as well as the highest rate of fatal casualties compared to the length of the highway, and it perhaps has the highest volume of traffic per mile of highway. And given the quality of our drivers, most of who possess fake driver's license, and the conditions of the roads, they both combine to make road journey a most hazardous undertaking. And without strict supervision of the law enforcing agencies it becomes an even more dangerous proposition.
It has been more than four years since the highway patrol was established. And it is not an easy task to exercise oversight over a stretch of nearly 12000 kilometers of highways. And we understand that with the constraints that we have to live with it is not possible to have the optimum level of resources in all the areas of the force overnight.
We suggest that the police administration take action to plug the loopholes right away. While the duality in command and control should be done away with immediately, the arrangements must be made to provide highway police with the necessary human resources and technical and logistic support on priority basis. But even that will take time. In the meanwhile, the current situation calls for sound utilisation of available resources which can be done by prioritising the areas and the tasks, because, in trying to be everywhere the highway patrol is being nowhere actually.
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