THE observance of national mourning day yesterday in memory of the victims of the Nimtoli blaze and Begunbari building collapse was yet more reason and opportunity for the country to reflect on the two tragedies that have left us all scarred and grieving. These heart-rending happenings, we need hardly say, will leave permanent marks on our collective consciousness. More tellingly, they will always serve as a reminder of all the things that government over the past many decades has not done to make life safe and secure for citizens. There is absolutely no excusing the authorities for the gross lapses in the way they have exercised, or not exercised, their responsibilities in ensuring citizens' safety in as densely populated a city as Dhaka. Which is why we believe that the time has come for us not merely to observe mourning days but also a 'national accountability day', for it has been a huge absence of accountability that has brought the nation to such a pass.

We have seen a clear absence of urban planning or deviation from codes relating to such planning making casualties of lives and property year after year. Every year people have died from collapsing buildings or fires and all that the authorities have done after such tragedies is to inform us that those who built the structures did not follow procedures and rules. Such explanations, we have always said and we say so again, have never held water. They are simply not acceptable because when an individual violates the rules and goes into building a structure in defiance of the rules, it is for authorities such as Rajuk or the city corporation to take swift action. In the case of Begunbari, where one more building has tilted dangerously, no one in authority saw any reason to keep track of building code violations. Likewise, in Old Dhaka, there has been absolutely no action against people who have in unbridled manner set up small factories and the like on their residential premises, with little thought to the consequences. Where have Rajuk, the city corporation and the works ministry been while all this culture of impunity was in progress? Observe the effrontery with which Rajuk and DCC officials now tell us that building codes were not maintained by the owners of the endangered structures. It is simply unbelievable and unacceptable. How did building owners have the audacity to defy the rules?

When we speak of a 'national accountability day', we do not do so in a light vein. In our opinion, this culture of impunity, which has now acquired monstrous proportions, must be firmly suppressed. We wonder how individuals wielding executive authority allowed such a culture to take such deep, and deepening, roots. We are also intrigued that all these major urban disasters have occurred in the past two decades when elected governments have held office alternately. That should not have been the case, for elected governments ought by nature to plug all the holes which might threaten social order and human life. In the matter of the recent tragic accidents, all the signs were there of disasters waiting to happen. They could happen again. Can we expect, in light of the enormity of the disasters of these past few days, the authorities to get out of the ostrich-like position they have always adopted as building codes and rules were being flouted with unimaginable impunity?