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Fitness certificates for cars rarely issued befittingly

City Correspondent
While returning home from office last Wednesday night, Uttara resident Sultan Ahmed stopped at the red light at Kuril Biswa road intersection.
Suddenly, a black taxicab rammed into Sultan's car from behind. Sultan got off his car to check the damage and found that both the cars were damaged quite badly.
"Fortunately, my hand brake was drawn, otherwise my car could have hit the car in front from the impact," he said.
It turned out that the taxicab's brake was faulty. Later, the young apologetic driver agreed to pay for the repair costs.
A week and a few days later, Sultan was cruising through the city's Rokeya Sarani. While he and his wife were waiting for the signal to turn green, a microbus hit his car bumper.
Sultan got down and found a traffic sergeant standing nearby. The microbus driver's answer to the police was it was an incident
of brake fail.
"After a row of disputes and wrangles, I had to be content with a fine of Tk 300 for the paint job of my rear bumper," said Sultan.
"My point is whenever I go to the BRTA office for my yearly car fitness certificate, they check almost all parts of my car and how fit it is for the city roads. It is especially the brakes that they check very carefully," said Sultan. "But what is it with the scores of vehicles plying without headlights, indicator lights, brake lights and proper brake system? How does that happen?" he said.
"The standard of some drivers in the street makes me afraid on the road. I urge the authorities to ensure the proper fitness of all the vehicles and make sure that only qualified drivers can get their hands on driving licences," he said.
Sultan is not the only to hold such notion. Vehicles grossly unfit to ply on city streets have been one of the biggest problems
of the capital over the past decade.
Sources at the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) say they are conducting regular mobile court drives to curb unfit vehicles.
"We are conducting mobile court drive four days a week to seize unfit vehicles. We have already seized a number of vehicles through the drives," a BRTA official said.
However, a source at the BRTA said the authority should be more active in scrutinising the relevant documents and the vehicles' fitness before giving the certificate.
Many car owners allegedly get their fitness certificates through a section of unscrupulous BRTA officials. Some do not even apply for fitness tests fearful that their vehicles would not pass the test. Some other car owners simply do not apply for fitness certificate because of the hassles that come withit.
"The other day I went to BRTA to renew our car's fitness certifi-
cate. 1 waited in the queue so that they could check the car and pass the fitness extension," said Badiuzzaman from Mohammadpur. "But 45 minutes went by and nothing happened. I approached the officer, who was in charge of inspecting the vehicles. He was signing a pile of papers, which belonged to car owners whose cars were not even in the waiting queue."
"The fitness certificate renewal process is unreasonably complicated. The other day when I went to renew my cars fitness, I circled around the different sections of BRTA for over three hours with no results," said Kabir Ahmed, a resident of Moghbazar.
"I have to go back there one of these days and get my car's fitness certificate. But after the hassle I went through that day, 1 want to stay away from that place," he said. "The process should be simplified by avoiding the needless duplication of receipts and photocopies among many other things."