A fire gutted Krishi Market in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur last week. It was the newest instance of a market consigned to the flames in recent times. In April this year, fires left two markets -- Bangabazar and New Super Market -- smouldering in ashes. One hardly needs to spell out the misery which these fires have left thousands of families in, with no resource to fall back, with hardly any ability to rebuild their shops from scratch. Cloth, garments, jewellery, rice and other items so necessary in life simply vanished in the flames.
Why do these fires erupt? And why always at night? In earlier instances too there have been fires, devastating ones which the Fire Service was hard put to bring under control, which destroyed shops and markets in the nocturnal hours. Of course, the authorities -- and they are all part of the city corporations as well as of others -- have regularly enlightened the public on their discovery that all these fires originated because of electrical short circuits.
If short circuits are the problem, how is it that they occur at night? In the Krishi Market case, it has been said that three shops, removed from one another by a good distance, caught fire at the same time. And it was then that the fire spread. Are we to now suppose that electrical short circuits began in those three shops in a mysterious, indeed ghostly manner, and then consumed the whole market? Our questions are then linked to the accusations by the affected traders that something is terribly wrong when markets catch fire in such a way. Translate that into plain language: It is arson that could have been working here.
For the authorities, who have over the years swiftly gone into a launch of investigations into such fires, it will simply not do to offer such inane explanations that the electricity went wrong, which turned out to be a bane for these traders who, even as they lay in bed at home, had their future going up in flames in the darkness of night. Of course, fires can break out at any time, even in the light of day. But how is it that when people are busy shopping in these markets of ours in daytime, no electrical short circuit takes place?
It is a question which calls for thorough probing. It is appreciable that the corporation authorities, in the aftermath of a fire, quickly go into taking measures to rehabilitate the affected traders. But they must do more, through soliciting the services of organizations in going to the depths of the origins of the fires. It is not natural that fires break out in the way they have in these recent months. The traders affected by such fires have always been suspicious of sinister elements being involved in these tragic happenings. There are those who do not mince words in suggesting that such fires are made to occur because there are elements who have greed -- that hunger for more wealth, that inordinate desire to grab land -- in their hearts. And greed ignites those fires. It is a suspicion, a charge, an accusation which ought not to be taken lightly. It needs to be probed, in the larger public interest.
And now move on, to the drama played out by a 12-year old boy at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport last week. The imagination fails to comprehend how he managed to find his way to a Kuwait Airways flight which was about to take off without anyone tracing his movements and stopping him. He was on the aircraft, with the crew not knowing that he was a probable stowaway, until the seat he was made to occupy turned out to be someone else’s. The boy was removed from the plane, which was only natural. Handed over to his surprised family, he went back home. And home was outside the nation’s capital.
The issue now is more complex than that of a 12-year old dodging security, all layers of it, and getting into that Kuwait Airways aircraft. How do civil aviation and the airport authorities explain the entire episode? The civil aviation administration has informed the country that those responsible for the sordid story will be made to answer for their negligence, that they will face the music. Should that be enough? Isn’t it logical to ask that the entire civil aviation administration and every individual involved with airport security be replaced or reshuffled over the incident? That 12-year old boy was a small incident, as some people might suppose.
Was it? What if a gun-toting youth, fury in his behaviour and terrorism burning in his eyes, had made it to the aircraft? When not a single passenger can evade security, right from the entry points of the airport to boarding, in that entire process of checking in, showing passports at the flight desk, taking boarding passes, going through immigration with embarkation cards in hand, and waiting before the counter to be waved through, how did this boy go through all this with not a worry? Prior to boarding, a person is expected to take off his shoes, his belt and other items in need of scrutiny. How did this boy walk through that area with such ease?
Let’s face it. The episode has demonstrated to all of us that severe and serious lapses bedevil the airport in Dhaka, at a time when stringent security measures are in place all over the world. And what could have happened if the passenger designated for the aircraft seat the boy was asked to occupy had not turned up, indeed if there had been no legitimate occupant for that seat? The flight would have taken off for Kuwait, where this boy would have landed. And then would have ensued a wider scandal for Bangladesh’s civil aviation authorities.
Of course the boy was taken off the flight before it took to the skies. Had there been someone else instead of him? Had there been a burly, ferocious, armed youth determined to plunge the entire aircraft and the country into a state of chaos by his action? One certainly would not want to imagine the ramifications of what might have happened. One is surely happy that the incident of the twelve-year old boy stepping up into a flight is now behind us.
But the disturbing mystery remains. Why and how did it all happen? And does the ministry of civil aviation mean to take action here? And will the parliamentary standing committee on civil aviation launch an inquiry into the whole episode, summoning senior personnel at civil aviation and at the airport and grilling them on this collective failure that was a portent of danger, that certainly did not raise our stock in the world?
Managing an airport and ensuring the safety of aircraft and flights are a whole lot more important than arranging cheerful inaugural journeys to foreign airports by the national flag carrier with dignitaries who have no business being on those flights. Reassuring the operators of foreign airlines coming to and departing from Bangladesh that they are safe, that our airports have impenetrable security is an imperative at this time. Where are the men and women to do the job?
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
