Mayor Atiqul inaugurates joint programme with BIGRS to reduce road accidents

Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Md Atiqul Islam has inaugurated a joint programme of the city corporation with the Bloomberg Philanthropy Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) to reduce road crashes in Dhaka.

He launched the programme online from Nagar Bhaban in Gulshan on Thursday night, said a press release.

The DNCC will also work as a partner of the road safety programme under the Partnership for Healthy Cities supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The city corporation and BIGRS will work in this regard till 2025.

One of the main factors behind road accidents around the world is speed control, so the programme will focus on this.

Kelly Larson, a representative from Bloomberg Philanthropies; representatives of other international partners; the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA); Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP); the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA); and the Accident Research Institute (ARI) of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) were present at the inaugural event.

Atiqul said road safety issues drew special attention through the Road Safety Movement of students when two students were killed by a reckless speeding bus on 29 July, 2018 in Kurmitola on Airport Road.

The students, occupying the roads across the country, waged a movement for nine days demanding road safety, he said.

The mayor further said the goals of the cooperation programme were to: strengthen traffic rules' enforcement, improve road design, build infrastructure, monitor road casualties, and conduct media campaigns to raise public awareness and change people's behaviour.

He called upon DTCA, DMP, BRTA, and ARI of BUET to reduce the number of road accidents and casualties in Dhaka through greater cooperation and coordination.

"I hope that by implementing road safety strategies and activities as planned in the next five years, we will be able to build a more livable and safe Dhaka," said Atiqul.

The mayor further said that there would be no experiment on road safety and traffic management in Dhaka. Only proven methods should be adopted, he added.

Kelly Larson said more than 1.35 million people in the world are killed on roads every year.

"It is possible to prevent almost all of these deaths through the implementation of the proven and data-based activities," she said.

Tariq bin Yusuf, supervising engineer of the DNCC and technical head of the BIGRS programme – while presenting the overall road safety issues of Dhaka North City at the inauguration programme – said road accidents were the eighth leading cause of death in the world and the leading cause of deaths of people aged between five and 29.

"It is the fourth leading cause of death of children aged between five and 14 in Bangladesh and 67% of the victims are within the age group of 15-49. According to Nirapad Sarak Chai, more than 5,000 people were killed and about 7,000 injured in more than 4,500 road crashes in 2019," he said.

As part of the BIGRS programme, the DNCC is included in a network of governments and municipal authorities around the world, where there is an opportunity to seek the help of global level road safety experts.

Under the programme, assistance will be given in: data collection and monitoring, safe movement, law enforcement, and media and communication.

International partners will provide technical and financial assistance to the DNCC to implement data-driven and proven solutions to save lives on the roads.

The partners include: the World Health Organization, Vital Strategies, the Global Road Safety Partnership, World Resource Institute (WRI), and The Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit.

The DNCC will work on infrastructure development to improve road safety as part of the next step in the Partnership for Healthy Cities.

It will further strengthen the life-saving activities conducted under the BIGRS programme.

Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, India, Uganda, and Vietnam are included in the third phase of the BIGRS programme (2020-2022).

Current cities in the programme include: Accra and Kumasi (Ghana), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bogota (Colombia), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Guadalajara (Mexico), Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Kampala (Uganda), Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi (India), and Sao Paulo, Salvador and Recife (Brazil).