Road safety: Students continue protests in capital
Students took to the streets yesterday in Dhaka’s Rampura, Dhanmondi, Kakrail, and Shantinagar
Students from several educational institutions continued staging demonstrations in different parts of the capital yesterday on Sunday, protesting the death of Notre Dame College (NDC) student Nayeem Hasan and demanding concessions on bus fares.
They also demanded the immediate implementation of their nine-point demand to ensure road safety.
Students took to the streets yesterday in the capital's Rampura, Dhanmondi, Kakrail intersection, and Shantinagar.
Dhaka Imperial College students demonstrated on the Rampura Bridge at around 11:30am, chanting slogans with placards presenting their demands at the rally.
Students from Willes Little Flower School and College, Habibullah Bahar University College, and Rajarbag Police Line School and College, blocked the Kakrail intersection at 1pm. Traffic came to a halt on both sides of the busy roads with the blockade.
Students of Birshreshtha Noor Mohammad Public College, Tejgaon Government College, Lalmatia Women's College, Birshreshtha Munshi Abdur Rouf Public College, Mohammadpur Government College, Government Science College, Holy Cross College, and Dhanmondi Government Boys' High School also staged protests across the city.
Jasim Uddin, a student of Willes Little Flower School, told The Business Standard (TBS), "We will not return home until the half-pass facility on all public transport is ensured and the government issues a gazette notification meeting our demands."
Earlier, on Saturday, students from different educational institutions blocked the Dhanmondi 27 intersection demanding safe roads.
The protesting students later called off the blockade, warning that they would besiege the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) office in Dhaka if the government fails to issue a gazette notification meeting their demands by end of Tuesday.
The nine-point demand set forth by the students includes a call for justice for road accident victims with swift trial tribunals, concessionary student bus fare, safety of women on public transport and roads, an automated and upgraded traffic management system, and inclusion of traffic laws in the national curriculum.
Students in the capital first started staging demonstrations demanding half or 50% bus fares on 18 November, when they blocked roads in the Nilkhet and New Market areas. Since then students have been carrying on their movement in some parts of the capital every day, and have reportedly vandalised around 30 buses so far.
Bus owners, however, have not shown any sign of agreeing to the demand for bus fare concessions.
Amid the ongoing student protest demanding a half-fare, NDC student Nayeem Hasan was crushed to death by a Dhaka South City Corporation garbage truck in Gulistan on 24 November.
