Following the students’ safe road movement, a purging operation in the transport sector has begun with regular checks of registration, fitness and route permits.
Vehicles without valid papers are not being allowed on the roads and the police have put up check posts to verify documents.
Meanwhile, a new problem has taken shape – while there are cars with valid papers, there aren’t enough drivers with proper licences.
According to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, BRTA, till 31 July of the running year, there are 35 lakh 82 thousand 460 registered vehicles. Of them, 22.50 lakh are motorcycles.
In Dhaka, there are 11 lakh 60 thousand 83 vehicles and, from this, 66, 235 are public vehicles.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough licenced drivers. To drive public transport, Public Service Vehicle, PSV, certificate is needed.
The numbers of PSV carrying drivers are only 10256.
That means, there aren’t drivers for 55,979 public vehicles.
Secretary general of Bangladesh Passenger Welfare Association, Mozammel Huq Chowdhury, told Bangla Tribune: “most public transport drivers do not have the right papers, some licences are fraudulently made and are not included in the database.”
Speaking on the matter, secretary general of Bangladesh road transport owners’ association, Khondokar Enayetullah, told Bangla Tribune: “there’s a scarcity of drivers; we have asked the government to set up an institute to train drivers.”
If the government gives us land then we can construct a training institute, using our own funds to develop skilled drivers.
BRTA deputy-director, Sheikh Md. Mahbub E Rabbani, told Bangla Tribune: “to drive a transport vehicle, PSV certificates are mandatory.”
On Thursday, many buses were seen sitting idle at Sayedabad since there is a shortage of drivers carrying the right documents.
Many drivers spent around Tk. 8000 to obtain fake licences but cannot come out on the streets now since these are not included in the BRTA data.