In the last couple of months, the nation has been focused on irregularities and the chaotic situation in the road transport sector. This sector invariably brings to mind the road-based vehicles. Normally in day-to-day conversations about road transport movements, people tend to remain oblivious to the vast network of water transport. As a result, the inherent as well as the newly developed deviations and drawbacks of the movement of water vessels remain untouched.
The reality speaks otherwise. Like on the numerous roads across the country, the water transport sector also continues to be plagued with scores of ills. In a river-dominant country like Bangladesh, this unsavoury picture is only natural. In fact, the mass-scale waterway communication can be traced to times over hundred years back. It is much older than the steam-powered, and later diesel-run, automobiles. The graduation of massive country boats into steam-engine-driven ones is considered the first major communicational breakthrough in this land.
To the great relief of the passengers in the past, the water vessels used to be freer of accidents and operational hazards. They, however, reached a worrying level as the number of passengers continued to soar. In the late 20th century, accidents involving diesel-run boats, motor launches in particular, assumed the proportions of a communication scourge. Fatalities caused by sinking of overloaded vessels during frenzied holiday home trips eventually became a common spectacle.
In the second decade of the 21st century, water vessel accidents are integral to the communication sector. Although they do not always result in terrible disasters like collision, these mishaps do cause lots of travel-time worries to the passengers. While aboard these launches and trawlers, many people continue to be on tenterhooks. Those days are gone when the launch 'Sarengs', persons at the wheel, would steer their vessels skilfully through all natural and man-made hazards. Unfortunately, like that found in buses and other vehicles, poorly trained and inexperienced crew also man big and smaller launches these days. The stark reality, however, is the onus of properly running these vessels lies with their owners.
Characteristically low-speed with no scope for rash driving, launches these days are also found competing with each other to collect as many passengers as possible. Even the race to overtake one another is now a common scene. The ordeal of passengers begins at the large launch terminals at Dhaka's Sadarghat, Chandpur or Barisal. Given the deteriorating condition of the launch routes caused by the movement of many vessels at a time, mobile law enforcers emerge as a demand of the time. Regulatory bodies equipped with the instruments of deterrents ought to be in place like in the road transport sector. With the fast increase in commuters and short and long-distance passengers, different types of water transports are also on the increase. They include improvised vessels, unsafe speedboats etc. It's only water traffic law enforcers under relevant government agencies and their surveillance which can remove the maladies besetting the sector.
Due to their ubiquitous presence throughout the country's roads, errant automobiles cannot always escape public watch and police dragnet. With the water vessel routes confined to certain rivers and coastal belts, they normally evade broad public focus. As a consequence, scores of irregularities and flouting of law on the part of these vessels' operators go unnoticed. The authorities concerned cannot turn a blind eye to the myriad types of malpractices fast sapping the sector's vitality.