At Dhirasram Railway Station, a small train station near Joydebpur, Gazipur, a man was photographed while urinating into a water tank from the roof of a Balaka Express train.
After a government official shared the photos via his personal Facebook account on October 13, the post quickly went viral. In Bangladesh, you need not book a ticket for an action film to see people on train roofs, hopping onto coach roofs for travel is an everyday thing here.
The danger of such an act seems to escape the people doing it on the regular. Just in the Dhaka division 2,321 people were crushed under trains in eight years, according to a 2017 report by Government Railway Police.
The Facebook post by the government official struck a chord with the concerned citizens of the country, given how dangerous the act is, not to mention utterly disgusting.
The photo raises question on the railway security and hygiene system. Passengers use water from the tank to perform wudu and rinse their mouths. It would be ludicrous to assume the man urinating into the tank did not know this, it would also be ludicrous assume he is the only one ever to have done so.
Unfortunately, most of the water tanks on train roofs are not sealed and do not have a lock system; it is staggeringly easy for people to open the water tanks.
Train surfing is illegal in Bangladesh; however, lack of seats in trains make people climb on the roof.
What are the authorities doing?
The authorities have not taken proper action against the law breakers; accidents pertaining to train roofs are a recurring problem in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Railway has ordered 250 extra strong cars with thicker and stronger roofs from Inka, a Jakarta based state-owned corporation that make trains and provide services in transportation businesses.
Agung Budiono, Inka finishing manager, said in a statement: “The train cars purchased by Bangladesh are larger with stronger structures and thicker walls and roofs. It is twice as strong as an ordinary train car.”
According to Agung such specification were needed because when trains get overcrowded, passengers climb onto roofs of the trains.
Bangladesh Railway briefed Inka to design train cars with flat roofs instead of sloped ones, which could have prevented train surfing. As it stands, the authorities are not taking any measures to prevent people from dangerously travelling on train roofs.
