Jubair Hasan

Transport owners have adopted a new strategy of refurbishing bodies of their age-old and unfit vehicles to dodge the ongoing special drive to keep the unfit vehicles off the streets in Ramadan.

For last few days, the operators are taking the age-old and unfit vehicles to various distant places for refurbishing their bodies, so that after completing the procedure they would be able to ply those vehicles again on the city streets. Scores of such busses were seen being decorated anew at Mohammadpur Beribadh and Gabtoli areas.

Shamim, a transport worker, said they brought a bus for painting its body so that it looks new enough to dodge the mobile courts that have been set up in the city's Demra, Gulshan, Mohakhali, Tejgaon and Malibagh areas.

The Communication Ministry had introduced a special drive Tuesday to free the city streets from the nagging traffic congestion and improve the situation during Ramadan by deploying these six mobile courts to drive out age-old, unfit and unlicensed vehicles.

Besides, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) had taken such initiatives from August 9, while Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) from August 4.

Due to these initiatives the city is witnessing comparatively smooth vehicular movement for the last couple of days.

A BRTA official said the mobile courts would be able to catch the transport operators who are refurbishing their vehicles to dodge the mobile courts, as they could not produce fake or invalid documents for their unfit and age-old vehicles.

"We need more manpower and other logistic supports to make the initiative a success," he said.

BRTA sources said there are over 0.5 million registered vehicles in the city. Of them around 3,000 are age-old and unfit, while a huge number of others have been plying without valid papers or with fake papers.

DMP claimed that they seized around 2,000 such vehicles that forced other transport owners to go to the BRTA office to update invalid papers of their vehicles.

DMP Joint Commissioner (Traffic) Monzur Quader expressed satisfaction over the special drives, as these drives are keeping the age-old, unfit and unlicensed vehicles off the roads, and improving the city's traffic situation.

He said the mobile courts were clearly instructed to check condition or to verify documents of each new and old vehicle in the city. "So no illegal vehicle operator would be able to escape," he added.