Editorial
Yet another train accident
Alarm bell ringing for fixing loose ends
CLOSELY on the heels of railway accidents taking a toll of lives at railway crossings, we now have the Upoban Express headed for Sylhet hitting the stationary Noakhali Express at Ashuganj from behind. The disaster taking place at night was tragic beyond proportions.
The driver of the Upoban Express sped towards Ashuganj on information of clearly dubious authenticity that the Noakhali Express had already departed leaving the line clear for the former. But what happened actually is that the Noakhali Express, apparently to haul up basketful of chickens overshot its stoppage time, turning a blind eye to any train coming in.
Two pertinent questions arise at this point: first, how come wrong information got relayed to Upoban driver or did he act on a pure notion? Second, and very important at that, the Noakhali Express having been stationary at the time, surely the red signal was blinking to warn off the onrushing train, something that was evidently overlooked by the Upoban driver.
All these conjure up a scenario of a weakened and dilapidated infrastructure, run by equally inefficient and untrained manpower, in which accidents are only waiting to happen. The weak signalling system and unprotected railway tracks spell veritable dangers to transportation by rail. Of the 2800 kilometer railways in the country as much as 1200 kilometers are risky. The shingles, slippers, electric train clips, fish plates are regularly stolen away with little supervision in place.
It is a ringing indictment on our poor sense of priority that such an important mode of transport has been allowed to atrophy through marginalisation, mismanagement and plunder.
Occasionally, we have heard of high sounding projects to modernise the railways, but no matching actions. Unless we have gotten the basics right in terms of efficient service management and secure travelling all the tall talks will be just blowing some hot air.
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