Jatri Kalyan Samity has termed Bangladesh Road Transport Authority's (BRTA) statistical report on various road accidents during Eid vacation as questionable.
The association's Secretary General Mozammel Haque Chowdhury said this on Monday.
The association has claimed that the report prepared by BRTA shows a low number of accidents and casualties.
The organization has sent a letter to BRTA Chairman Noor Mohammad Majumdar and requested him to provide April's daily accidents data.
Earlier,Jatri Kalyan Samity published a report mentioning 328 people were killed and 565 injured in 304 road accidents in 15 days from April 15 to April 29 during this year's Eid vacation.
Mozammel Haque Chowdhury said: "We sent a letter to BRTA claiming that the report was unreal and fictitious, and asked for detailed information."
The letter sought an explanation as to why the number of road accidents, 89 killed and 55 injured, were more in the association's report than the BRTA report during the same period.
According to the letter: "BRTA has been preparing and publishing road accident reports on a monthly basis since January this year. On review, it can be seen that there is no match between BRTA's report and police report or any private organization's report.”
Noting that 40% of the accidents occurring in Bangladesh do not come to the media, the letter of the association said that 1,040 seriously injured patients have been admitted to National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR) in Dhaka in the 13 days before and after this Eid.
The letter further states, the picture of road accident severity would have been revealed if road accidents data is collected from all the hospitals across the country.
Excluding the calculation of hospitals all over the country, 2,000 road accident injured patients were admitted in the three mentioned hospitals only in the 15 days before and after Eid, it added.
As the number of injured patients in BRTA's road accident report is several times less than the number of injured patients in road accidents in these three hospitals, the question of whether BRTA's road accident report is unrealistic and fictitious has been raised from various quarters.
The letter also said: "The government is sincere in reducing road accidents. But BRTA wants to claim that the number of road accidents has decreased in the country by giving the data that the number of road accidents has decreased without showing the correct picture of the road accidents in the country before the government. As a result, the government is repeatedly stumbling to take the initiative to formulate and implement a proper action plan to control road accidents."
Mozammel Haque Chowdhury said: "It is beyond BRTA's jurisdiction to ask not to disclose the statistics of road accidents prepared byJatri Kalyan Samity or to ask to show them before publishing the report. Every road accident news published in the newspaper has a statement from the victim, rescue police officer, local public representative or fire service official. Therefore, the Jatri Kalyan Samity considers the news of these accidents as correct and objective."
