The metro rail is a flagship urban transport project of Bangladesh. Any negligence in the maintenance of the metro endangers passenger safety and the country’s international credibility. The death of a pedestrian named Abul kalam at Dhaka’s Metro Rail Station on Sunday has again raised serious questions about the safety and construction quality of the metro rail project. The tragic event occurred at the same location where, on September 18, 2024, a bearing pad near the pillar 430 slipped suspending metro operations between Agargaon and Motijheel for nearly 11 hours. Following that incident, a seven –member probe committee was formed and tasked to submit findings within five working days. As is usual in our country, any investigation report is seldom made public, the probe report on that incident has not been made public as well, and nobody knows what happened to the report.
Experts are of the opinion that the recurrence of incidents at the same spot points to deeper flaws in design, engineering, and oversight. This is not merely the result of poor quality bearing pads, but it reflects serious shortcomings in both construction and supervision, they say. We are profoundly alarmed by the death of a pedestrian, but behind this tragic death lies an utter negligence of the supervision by the authorities responsible for public safety. The repetition of such gross failure suggests that the initial incident was treated as a glitch instead of a serious warning that such tragic incident may repeat in future. The trust of people about the safety of life on Metro begins to shatter and they ask was this death just an accident. They even begin to say that it was a structural murder. People vent their anger by saying that in mega projects there are numerous consultants, foreign equipment and modern technology, but no safety.
The global engineering of elevated rail systems is indeed mature now. That a bearing pad could dislodge not once, but twice in Bangladesh, points to a grave compromise in either its construction, its design or the rigour of is oversight and maintenance. People now want the authorities concerned must immediately run an independent safety review of the entire Metro line with its findings made public The explanations offered so far by the authorities are vague and not acceptable to reason. The slipping of the bearing pad is not a minor technicality, and so, every vulnerable component, every bearing pad must be subjected to strict scrutiny. Whose negligence caused such an accident, who or what is responsible- these questions agitate the mind of the people. The death of Abul Kalam Azad is a direct result of supervisory failure. Immediately after Sunday’s incident, the authorities suspended metro services, causing widespread disruption. A probe committee has been formed, compensation has been promised to the victim’s family. These are only the administrative action, not any solution. These cannot address the deeper crisis- lax supervision and weak accountability.
We hope, the tragic death of Abul Kalam will be the final warning to the authorities so that there may not be any repeat of death due to lack of proper maintenance and regular supervision of the Metro.
