Actress Shabnam Faria, a familiar face in Bangladesh’s entertainment industry, is also active on social media, where she regularly shares her views on her personal life, career, and various contemporary issues.
A university student died Monday in an accident involving a motorized or battery-powered rickshaw. Recalling the incident, Shabnam Faria has called for a ban on motorized and battery-powered rickshaws on main roads.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, Faria wrote: “Yesterday, at the very moment I was sharing the joy of finishing my master’s at IUB with everyone, another IUB student, Oli Nur, was losing his life in a road accident. Are motorized rickshaw drivers more powerful than our government, lawmakers, and administration, that no effective action can be taken against them? This has been our demand for a long time: we don’t want to see motorized or battery-powered rickshaws on Dhaka’s main roads. Is that really such a big ask?”
Describing an incident from a few days earlier, the actress wrote: “A few days ago, I was watching a video from 300 Feet Road. After AI cameras were installed there, drivers were stopping at the signal even when the road was empty. I was thinking about how technology could so remarkably change people’s behavior in just a few days, and right then I noticed some of our ‘special’ motorized rickshaw drivers. The other vehicles were stopped, the signal was red, but they were sailing right through. What signal applies to them? They’re descendants of Bengal’s last Nawab! Bangladesh’s prime minister can stand and wait at a signal, but they can’t!”
Plans on the issue have been discussed for a long time, she said, without ever being implemented. Posing a string of questions, Shabnam Faria wrote: “There has been talk for a long time about regulating, registering, licensing, and setting routes for battery-powered rickshaws. But it’s ordinary people who pay the price for the vast gap between planning and implementation. The question is, how many more deaths like Nur’s will it take before a firm decision is made? How many more families will lose a child, husband, father, or brother before we stop calling it a ‘tragic accident’? Or will our policymakers only feel the need to act once protesters shut down the roads at Shahbagh?”
Shabnam Faria said she is not calling for motorized or battery-powered rickshaws to be banned outright, taking away anyone’s livelihood. Rather, she supports a lawful, safe road system. “I’m not talking about taking away anyone’s livelihood,” she said. “We want a regulated, safe, and lawful system. But if one group’s hold over the roads matters more than human life, then the question stops being just about road safety; it becomes a question of who actually has more right to this city’s streets. How many more deaths will it take to get an answer?”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report