The Bangladesh highway police is responsible for ensuring the security of approximately 9,000km of regional and national highways throughout the country. Which is why the highway police's current crisis of manpower is all the more concerning, especially considering the raft of criminal activity which have made our roads and highways decidedly unsafe more so than usual.
With the current lack of manpower, the highway police can only cover around 3,500km while the rest of the 6,000km or so are being managed by district police, local police, and other units of law enforcement.
While safety on our roads and highways has always been a contentious issue in Bangladesh, the fact that a person was raped on a moving bus in Tangail makes safety on our highways even more of an elevated issue. To that end, it is good to know that it has prompted the highway police to heighten surveillance on public transportation -- but given the volume of traffic that these routes witness, this means that the gap in manpower has to be filled appropriately to ensure the safety of passengers.
Increased surveillance of vehicles which are especially known to engage in criminal activity is a good start, but it would mean little if those who are responsible for carrying out these duties are too exhausted to go on due to being short staffed. Our highway police need to be more empowered to tackle these kinds of dangers, but they cannot do so very efficiently until and unless they are given the necessary resources and funding.