The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mamunur Rashid

A large number of motor vehicles of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) remain out of order as its motor workshop suffers from logistic support and is beset with bureaucratic problems.

Sources said if they need to replace parts of the DMP vehicles, they have to wait for a long time, as they have to call tenders for supply of the spare parts. Such processing needs more than six months or more.

Sometimes tenders bidders are unable to supply the spares parts of vehicles, which are at least 15 to 32 years old.

DMP Motor Transport (MT) Department sources said that they were going to call tenders to procure new spare parts for the vehicles. If they bring new parts most of the out of order vehicles will be road worthy, source added. In the DMP there are 180 technician policemen but none of them have sufficient knowledge of doing motor maintenance works. In the workshop there is one inspector of police and one sub inspector.

Source said most of the police technicians at the workshop received training but they have not become technicians.

Most of the police drivers do not bring their vehicles to the workshop when minor repair and maintenance work should suffice, and ultimately discard those when they go out of order.

The DMP has a pool of 614 vehicles. Of them, 69 are fully damaged for the last five years.

As many as 545 dilapidated DMP vehicles are running on the roads with some 50 to 60 vehicles visiting the DMP workshop daily. Most of the vehicles reportedly cannot be maintained due to lack of logistic support.

There are about 1,050 Chinese motorbikes run by patrol duty policemen but most of the bikes are not properly maintained. The police do not change lubricants in due time and as a result engines of most of the bikes get damaged.

Every day the police motor workshop maintains at least 25 vehicles as against some 50 vehicles brought to the workshop.

Sudip Kumar Chakrabarty Assistant Commissioner (AC) of the Motor Transport (AC-MT) Department told the New Nation that DMP has taken initiatives to properly run the workshop.