Editorial
Railway minister's surprise visits
Correct the institutional flaws
We are heartened by the news that communications and railways minister on Saturday paid a surprise visit to the Chittagong railway station. His sudden visit revealed a nexus among the security staff and commercial departments of the station and ticket scalpers whereupon six security personnel and all of the station's 14 booking clerks were transferred to remote, less important stations. He also paid an abrupt visit to the Oxygen-Hathazari and Bhatiari-Borodighir Paar roads in the port city, which resulted in issuing show-cause notices to three Roads and Highways Department engineers for their alleged negligence in repairing the rundown roads.
Such surprise and sudden visits are something that the minister has been undertaking since he assumed the post. This is a clear manifestation of the minister's pro-active role in taking corrective measures, which we find laudable indeed. But this also brings to light that the railway and the RHD are riddled with corruption, poor maintenance and negligence of duty of the concerned officials and staff.
We fail to understand how, in spite of frequent media reports on ticket scalping, a section of unscrupulous railway officials manage to collude with the scalpers and sell tickets at a highly increased rate. Although transfer of those officials can bring about a temporary change in the practice, what is really needed is a systemic change by strengthening regular monitoring of the officials' activities and also by digitizing the whole system as much as possible to ward off the scalpers.
We believe these long-lingering problems emanate mainly from systemic flaws. Therefore, the instant corrective measures can only be short term palliative, merely a stopgap solution. In order for a long-term solution, the minister should focus on correcting the systemic flaws and plugging the institutional loopholes.
However, there is also the need for oversight of the high-ups including the minister on a regular basis, a practice which perhaps has been missing since long. But alongside this, immediate attention should be paid to remove the lacunae that have made the two biggest service providers inefficient and wasteful.
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