Editorial
This is unacceptable
Minister for legalising extortion!
Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan hogs headlines not for any development related news in his ministry but due to his startling, mind-boggling demands and comments. To begin with his latest antic, he has demanded before a parliamentary subcommittee that extortion be legalised in the transport sector. It is all too known how the rising fares have combined with stepped up extortionist activities to wreak havoc on the people.
But he thinks legalising tolls will stop corruption in the transport sector. So confident is he of his prescription he even charted a course of how the 'legal tolls' would be collected from buses, trucks, autorickshaws and labourers working in the sector. He wants working expenses of the trade unions to be garnered from extortion.
One can quite see that his identity as a minister and his credentials as a trade union leader have merged. In effect, the line between his being a cabinet minister with a given responsibility which allows no room for any conflict of interest to arise from any other hat he might have worn, stands blurred.
Clearly, he is in a denial mode as to the consequences of legitimising extortion in the transport sector. This can only open the flood-gate for corruption, extortion and rent-seeking in other sectors. Extortion which is another form of graft leads to marking up prices of services and goods across the board and therefore should be discouraged.
Not long ago, Shahjahan Khan emphasised that drivers be called 'service providers' and not 'killers'. True, so long as they drive competently and sensibly. The 'killer' label had been put on them following a series of road accidents including the one that took the lives of Tarek Masud and Mishuk Munir. He even bluntly suggested drivers had little use for education. This was in defence of a long list of names he had recommended for recruitment as drivers.
So there is a pattern to the minister's keeping his transport constituency in good humour even at the cost of public interest that he is oath-bound to serve.
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