Students’ movement for road safety cripples Dhaka traffic on eventful day

Students of schools and colleges demanding effective measures to ensure safety on the road have demonstrated blocking streets in Dhaka for the fourth day in a movement triggered by deaths of two of their fellows.

Staying away from classes, uniformed students carrying schoolbags crippled traffic in the capital on Wednesday as the movement got more complex and spread to other cities, including second biggest city Chattogram.

In Dhaka, the students took the place of the police to check licence of drivers.

They seized the key of a police car after the driver failed to show licence at Dhanmondi. Several government vehicles also faced the same fate.

The little protesters forced the car of Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed to turn around after it took the wrong lane at Banglamotor, reminding him of traffic rules. 

“The Law Is Equal to Everyone. We Want Justice,” they shouted the slogan.

A pick-up truck ran over and injured one of the protesters who tried to stop the vehicle to check the driver’s licence at Shonir Akhra.

The student, who miraculously survived the brutality, has been hospitalised with fractured bones.

Meanwhile, transport workers in Narayanganj demonstrated blocking the Dhaka-Chattogram Highway for six hours in protest against the student movement.

The transporters also beat up some schoolboys in Siddhirganj’s Mouchak.

Students of private universities joined the protesters in Dhaka.

“The government should accept the demands of the students so that our children can return home safely," the mother of a student told bdnews24.com.

“We’re worried about the deaths of our children on the roads. We had sleepless nights,” said another guardian.

Commuter sufferings due to the blockades and lack of public transport worsened.

Many had to walk kilometres to reach the destination.

 

The students have been demonstrating since Sunday after a bus ploughed into a group of students waiting for transport at Kurmitola on Airport Road, killing two and injuring several others.

The protesters’ demands include capital punishment of the drivers responsible for the deaths, and forcing unfit vehicle and unlicenced drivers off the road.

Amid the protests, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal held a meeting with representatives of transport owners and workers, including Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan.

Kamal later urged the students to go back to classes assuring them of taking steps to ensure road safety.

Shajahan, a leader of the transporters, visited the family of a dead student in the evening and apologised as demanded by the protesters for his ‘inadvertent remarks and conduct’.

The demonstrators, however, announced they will take to the street again on Thursday while returning home amid rains on Wednesday.

Later, the government ordered all the educational institutions shut on Thursday citing security reasons.

“In the wake of the situation that has developed, all educational institutions will remain closed tomorrow for the sake of the students’ safety,” Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said.

The Rapid Action Battalion has arrested an owner of Jabale Noor Paribahan, the transport company buses of which were involved in the Airport Road crash.

The authorities had already arrested three drivers of Jabale Noor and two of their assistants involved in the crash.

Police took the driver of the bus that crashed the students into their custody for a seven-day questioning.

The government has also fast-tracked the process to pass a long-awaited transport law with harsher punishment for errant drivers.