Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
91
Highway Police
The Highway Police was created in 2005 to maintain and ensure discipline, enforce traffic rules
and regulations, improve traffic management, prevent highway crime, collect and disseminate
intelligence and police patrolling as well as ensure safety on state highways. In 2009 the
Highway Police Regulation came into effect in line with SRO-252, Law/2009. The Highway Police
operational area is divided in four regions, i.e. Comilla; Gazipur; Bogra and Madaripur, in total
including 7 city corporations and 97 municipalities. Each region is subdivided into different
zones.
The present Highway Police force (March 2016) comprises 2,215 staff members, employed at
the Head Quarters, the four highway regional offices, 10 ASP Circle Offices, 35 Police Stations
and 37 outposts. The vehicle park consists of 8 Jeeps, 13 cars, 86 pick-ups, 2 microbuses, 2
ambulances and 177 motorcycles. Given the size of the network and the number of staff, the
vehicle park is limited. The Highway Police is active in road safety awareness programmes,
amongst others through community policing. Leaflets are produced and meetings are organised
to support this process.
The Highway Police indicates a number of limitations, including insufficient number of police
stations and out posts; insufficient human resources; insufficient logistics support and large
distance between units. The Highway Police face acute mobility problems due to unavailability
of vehicles and other transport facilities including fuel cost, as well as shortage of qualified and
capable manpower, logistics and equipment (S. M. Sohel Mahmud et al., 2013).
NGOs – road safety voluntary and advisory groups
Various NGO’s such as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Nirapad Sarak
Chai, Work for Better Bangladesh (WBB), Safe Community Foundation and Poribesh Bachao
Andolon are undertaking road safety campaigns aimed at different groups of road users
throughout the country and helping in creating massive safety awareness, particularly at the
local level.
Funding mechanism and financial resources
Interviews with stakeholders have indicated sustainable and transparent funding to be one of
the key problem areas for improving road safety performance in Bangladesh. This is reflected in
staff capacity limitations, e.g. at ARI or the Highway Police, or lack of equipment or facilities, for
example police enforcement vehicles, ambulances or driving simulators. No insight was gained
on the amount of funding available to implement road safety strategy.
9.4 Roads and Mobility
Bangladesh has road network of 325 681 kilometres including six types of roads, i.e. national
highway (including main and national roads), regional highway, zilla road6 , upzilla road7, union
road and village road. The Roads and Highway Department (RHD) is responsible for first three
6 A zilla road is a district road.
7 An upzilla road is a sub-district road.