One life for 166 taka

- Asif Saleh

Another day, another ferry capsizes. This time, the number nears around 600, although the true number of dead will never be known. We read the news and hopelessly become numb at the sheer sadness of the tragedy. SIX Hundred people died in a single accident that could have been easily avoided. What makes this news even more outrageous is that within the last year and a half almost 1200 people died in such accidents and yet nothing changed. The ferry owners and their greed, accompanied by the impotent governent policies, show their collective middle fingers to the safety and rights of the people.

By this time different newspapers have elaborated how lack of safety precautions and a set of outright negligence by the port officials led to the incident. A similar incident happended in April and another 200 passengers drowned. When the news was warm in the newspapers, the government took a series of steps to prevent such accidents. However, as newspaper reported that all of these were anulled when the news moved off the headlines after the lobbying from the ferry owners. The following points from Daily Star makes it clear on how this could have clearly been avoid.

"Over 2,000 big and medium-sized vessels are plying various routes covering more than 8,000 miles of waterways in Bangladesh.

1. The non-implementation of the government's safety measures is blamed on a longstanding feud among three groups involved in the sector: marine engineers, naval architects and captains.
2. The government's efforts to strengthen supervision on the vessels failed because of the conflict among those people, said sources in the shipping department.
3. A conflict between Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) and Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC) made the situation worse.
4. The government failed to shift the responsibility of design and plan approval for passenger vessels from the BIWTA because of the leverage of a strong nexus.
5. The nexus of BIWTA officials is accused of approving flawed designs for the vessels and helping their owners tamper with the original designs in exchange for money.
6. The engineers said all launches have been modelled on a Danish design of the 1980s. They said there are no guidelines for construction of launches. A set of guidelines was formulated in 2001, but it was not made effective as yet.
7. The government also failed to implement some decisions taken recently to ensure safety and security of passengers largely because of non-cooperation of the launch owners.
8. After the MV Mitali tragedy in April, a ban was imposed on launch travels between 4:00pm and 8:00pm for two months, but the authorities withdrew the embargo under pressure from the launch owners association.
9. An inquiry committee was formed after every disaster, but none of its recommendations was implemented, said the sources.
   

The most interesting part of this story is that the shipping minister, under whose tenure, in almost eight major accidents such as this one almost 1230 people died, claims no responsiblity for this accident and refuses to resign. He did not even bother to visit to the area until three days after the incident in an outrageous display of arrogance. This is the same minister whose skin was barely saved after Denmark took away a proposed aid by alleging attempted corruption by him. In an interview, after the latest accident he blamed lack of funding for goverment being unable to take appropriate safety precaution. Ironically, he said this only two days after he voted with the other members of the parliament to raise his salary and perks by 100% to 600% -- retroactively from July last year which will cost the tax payers and additional 5.31 crore taka. Since this money will be back paid from last year, I don't know if his conscience (if he has any still left) will prevent him to accept a 600% raise for a job that he admits he could not do for lack of fund.

While all this is going on, of course, our opposition politicians are stragely quiet on this issue. Perhaps there are ferry owners in their party as well, whose interest they do not want to hurt. The local MP of Chandpur where the accident occurred was kind enough to donate 1 lach taka for the victims -- one lach for 600 people -- that's a whopping 166 taka per deadbody. It was very kind of him. We hope the MP can recover the money by not paying next month's phone bill!

Among all these inept, morally corrupt politicians, business owners and burocrates, there lies my brother Belayet Hossain on "boro station". He did not sleep all night lying next to the river. He lost 11 family members. There lies Babul, the garment worker, who lost his only son -- 4 year old. No one could say anything when he was crying and saying " Bhai amar polare apnara phiraya diya jaan. Amar polare chara ami ghumaite parum na." (Oh brother, please return my son, I can not sleep without my son".) or what about that the rickshaw puller Hanif from Bhola? He merely lost his wife and three children. Chor Fashion's Abul Hashmot lost his younger brother and sister and his father. He spent all night next to the river as well. There are so many names and stories like this. Will they ever reach our leaders? or we will just quietly sigh and move on and wait till the next ferry disaster happens. If I were a betting person, I wouldn't bet on anything to change. After all we lack the funds to save these people, remember?

However, miracles do happen and perhaps one day the lives of these people will be worth more than 166 taka to these politicians. Miracles such as that of 9 year old Nasim keeps our hope alive. Nasim survived by holding a mere wooden piece and came floating to the shore. He lost his father and uncle. But a local person Abul Hossain Jacob was so moved by his plight that the he has adopted him and wants to pay for all his education and living expenses from here on. If we only had a few more Jacobs ....

Endnote:

After writing this piece, I found out that there has been a bill placed in the parliament which makes it a crime to write against any member of parliament in a newspaper. In that case, I'll just post it on a website. On my write up for the newspaper, I will talk about what a great job our shipping minister is doing protecting the interest of the common mass. Who deserves a raise more than him?